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History of non-Christian Religions — Topic 1

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History of non-Christian Religions — Topic 1

1.1 The Concept of Religion and the Distinctive Features of the Religious Worldview

The word “religion” is of Latin origin: the Latin religio carries the senses of “conscientiousness, piety, devoutness.” Several etymologies have been proposed. One traces back to Cicero (106-43 BC), who connected “religion” with the verb relegere, meaning “to reread,” “to gather again,” or “to discuss anew” [Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods II, 72]. Another etymology comes from the Christian writer and rhetorician Lactantius, who in his treatise The Divine Institutes suggested that religio derives from the Latin verb religare, “to bind” or “to fasten.” This account was developed further by Blessed Augustine, who derived the word from the verb religo - “I bind together what has been undone, I reunite” - laying stress on the reflexive prefix re-.

“This interpretation was taken up by many Christian thinkers and elaborated in a wide range of theological and philosophical works, including those of Russian scholars. The sense of connection with the spiritual world or, in the words of Archpriest Sergius Bulgakov, ‘the experience of connection with God and the recognition of God,’ constitutes the essence of a person’s religious experience,” writes Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) [Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, Archpriest Oleg Korytko, Archpriest Valentin Vasechko. A History of Religions. Moscow, 2016].

A comparison of worldviews across different religious traditions reveals a recognizable set of distinctive features inherent to the religious worldview. The authors of the textbook A History of Religions — Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev), Archpriest Oleg Korytko, and Archpriest Valentin Vasechko — single out the following:

A worldview becomes religious through the presence of a particular spiritual or religious experience.

The religious worldview typically rests on an opposition between the profane — the ordinary and everyday — and the sacred, that is, the holy.

The religious worldview is grounded in the affirmation of a “spiritual,” often immaterial and invisible, world that lies beyond the boundaries of ordinary, everyday experience.

An adherent of a religious worldview is convinced that communion with the spiritual world is possible.

A worldview system that lays claim to the name “religious” typically includes a set of norms of conduct, expressed in activity (including cultic activity) and in the motivation of actions grounded in that worldview.

The following aspects can be distinguished within a religious worldview:

1. Cosmological (from Greek κόσμος — “world,” “earth,” “world order,” and λόγος — “word,” “teaching”) — conceptions of the origin of the universe (cosmogony), of the gods (theogony), and of humankind (anthropogony);

2. Hamartiological (from Greek ἁμάρτημα — “sin,” “error”) — the conception of the origin of evil;

3. Soteriological (from Greek Σωτηρία — “salvation”) — the conception of salvation and of the overcoming of imperfection;

4. Eschatological (from Greek ἔσχατος — “last,” “final”) — the conception of the end of the universe.

1.2 The Question of the Universality of Religious Faith

Throughout the nineteenth century, European humanities scholarship sought natural explanations for the existence of religion. Scholars who denied the existence of the object of religious aspiration—or denied God altogether—reduced the diverse religious experience of humanity to a more or less elevated self-deception, to error, and sometimes to a deliberate deception of the masses by the clergy. Until recently, this was the standard explanation taught in Soviet schools.

The nineteenth century witnessed the proliferation of diverse theories regarding the origin of religion, alongside attempts to identify a people or tribe entirely devoid of religious belief. This occurred despite Plutarch having already written: “You may see states without walls, without laws, without coinage, without writing; but no one has ever seen a people without God, without prayer, without religious exercises and sacrifices.” Cicero too observed: “Of all the multitude of various creatures, there is not one besides man that has any notion of God; and among men there is no nation so savage and rude as not to be aware that it must have a God…” [On the Laws, I, 8].

Had a people genuinely without religion ever been found, it would have justified the claim that religion is a later phenomenon, a product of the evolution of human consciousness. The English scholar John Lubbock collected numerous reports of peoples supposedly devoid of any belief whatsoever. Mouat, who studied the Andaman Islanders, wrote that they had “not even the crudest elements of religious belief.” The traveler Sir Samuel Baker, who visited the Nilotic tribes of the Sudan in the early 1860s, reported that “All without exception have no conception of a Supreme Being. Neither have they any form of worship or idolatry; nor is the darkness of their minds enlightened even by a ray of superstition.”

Subsequent, more rigorous research has refuted all such conclusions. We are now well acquainted with the religion of the Andamanese and with the beliefs of the Sudanese Nilotes. “The assertion that wild tribes wholly devoid of religious notions have actually been found does not rest upon a sufficient amount of evidence such as we have a right to demand for so exceptional a case” [Tylor, E.B. Primitive Culture. London, 1903].

“The universality of faith raises the following question: why do all human beings — or at least all tribes and peoples, if not every individual — feel the need for a religious experience of being? The answer is far from simple or unambiguous, and different thinkers at different times have answered it in different ways,” notes Professor A.B. Zubov [Zubov, A.B. A History of Religions. Book One: Prehistoric and Extra-Historical Religions. A Course of Lectures. Moscow: Planeta Detei, 1997, p. 10].

Different cultures have answered this question in various ways. As stated in the ancient Indian Bhagavad Gita: “The faith of creatures conforms to their inner nature; man consists of faith: as his faith is, so is he” [17.3]. Faith, in other words, is an inner quality that defines the human being.

Cicero held faith to be innate: “We must acknowledge that the gods exist precisely because knowledge of them is implanted in us, or, rather, is innate” [On the Nature of the Gods I.XVII.44]. So too St. Justin Martyr: “God is not a name, but a thought of something inexpressible, implanted in human nature” [St. Justin the Philosopher and Martyr. Works. Moscow, 1995].

Clement of Alexandria also articulated the idea that Divine Providence is active even in the pagan world: “Your foot shall not stumble if you refer all good — whether Hellenic or our own (Christian) — to Divine Providence. The Author of every good is God” [Stromata I, 5].

“Among the ancient pagans there was a search for God with thirst and hunger,” wrote Gregory the Theologian; “throughout the history of mankind the hand of God is visible, leading man toward the Truth” (P.G. 36. 160—161). [Cited in: Zubov, A.B. A History of Religions. Book One. Moscow: Planeta Detei, 1997, p. 12].

1.3 Secular Academic Approaches to the Study of Religion

Numerous secular attempts have been made to explain the universality of religious faith through the lenses of sociology and psychology. “There is no precise moment at which religion began to exist, and there can be no question of finding some ingenious means of mentally transporting ourselves back to it. Like every institution created by man, religion does not begin anywhere. All speculative constructions of this kind have therefore rightly been discredited; they can consist only of subjective and arbitrary constructions that are not amenable to any verification. We set ourselves quite another goal and task. We would like to find a means of identifying the permanently acting causes upon which the most essential forms of religious thought and religious practice depend,” wrote Émile Durkheim [The Elementary Forms of Religious Life]. For Durkheim, the existence of religion is conditioned by an internal social factor: man is inwardly social, and religion is an unconscious mechanism that binds people into a society. Acknowledging that religion belongs to the very nature of man, he wrote: “The general conclusion of this book is that religion is a phenomenon that is, above all, social. Religious representations are collective representations that express collective realities; rites are modes of action that arise only in assembled groups and are intended to arouse, sustain, or restore certain mental states of those groups.”

Max Müller, the nineteenth-century German and English philologist, religious scholar, and translator of the Rigveda and other ancient Indian religious texts, held that human beings acquired religious ideas through the contemplation of natural phenomena. The British anthropologist Evans-Pritchard summarizes Müller’s view as follows: “All human knowledge comes through the senses, that is, through touch, which provides a heightened impression of reality, and all our reasoning, including religion, is based upon this. There is nothing in faith that was not previously in the senses. Thus intangible things, such as the sun and the sky, gave man the idea of the divine. They also furnished the material out of which deities were made. Max Müller did not wish to be understood as holding that religion began with man’s deification of natural objects. Rather, he meant that these objects gave man the very feeling of God… His main postulate was that the idea of the infinite, once it had arisen, could thereafter be conceived only metaphorically and symbolically. And metaphors and symbols are drawn only from what seemed grand in the surrounding world, namely the heavenly objects or, more precisely, their attributes. In time these attributes lost their original metaphorical sense and were personified as deities proper. Nomena turned into numina” [Evans- Pritchard, E. Theories of Primitive Religion. Clarendon Press 1965].

The dominant framework in the religious studies of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was evolutionism. This was characteristic of scholarship as a whole, and religious studies was no exception. For the most part, religion was understood as the natural development of human thought from primitive forms — fetishism, animism, totemism, and magism — toward more developed forms of theism: polytheism, monotheism, and monism. The scholarly world expected, of course, that religious forms would eventually fall away altogether and give way to a scientific worldview. Some traced the emergence of religion to a cognitive error: man, attempting to make sense of altered states of consciousness such as dreams and trances, mistakenly concluded that the soul exists (Edward Burnett Tylor). The idea of the soul then grew into the idea of spirits, spirits into gods, and gods into God.

Herbert Spencer, by contrast, held that kinship ties and man’s dependence on chieftain-ancestors gave rise to the idea of God. Others believed that religion arose out of fear (Wilhelm Wundt), or out of a distinctive emotional tension (Robert Marett) that drove human beings literally to “dance religion into being,” or simply out of the imagination of a man who could not yet distinguish the subjective from the objective (Ernest Crawley). Freud sought to interpret religion as a form of neurosis, while Lucien Lévy-Bruhl held that religion is rooted in a distinctive pre-logical mode of thought characteristic of “savage” societies.

There were also those who resisted such one-sided approaches to religious thought. “The English scholars Andrew Lang and Sir Evans-Pritchard pointed out that even among the most primitive peoples there is a knowledge of a Supreme God, the creator and judge of mankind. The ‘savages,’ it is true, do not turn to Him in their everyday life. As it turned out, there is on earth not only no pre-religious people, but also no people unaware of the ‘Father of all’… Consequently, the central claim of nineteenth-century Hegelian religious studies — that belief in spirits precedes belief in gods, and belief in many gods precedes monotheism — was not borne out by the objective scientific evidence,” notes A.B. Zubov [Cited in: Zubov, A.B. A History of Religions. Book One. Moscow: Planeta Detei, 1997, p. 12].

In time, an alternative concept of primordial monotheism (Urmonotheismus) also emerged. According to this theory, faith in God preceded all religious forms but was gradually forgotten, giving rise to other religious forms. Wilhelm Schmidt held similar views. The Swedish religious scholar and Lutheran bishop Nathan Söderblom expressed a comparable position: agreeing with Andrew Lang, he argued that faith in God does not develop out of conceptions of spirits but is an independent form of faith, as ancient as belief in spirits or magic.

1.4 Typologies and Classifications of Religions

The first scholarly attempt at a universal systematization of religions was undertaken by G.W.F. Hegel: natural religions, religions of spiritual individuality, and absolute religion. Each stage in turn breaks down into phases that take concrete form as specific confessions [Hegel, G.W.F. Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion].

Religions have also been divided into “natural” and “ethical” (C.P. Tiele), “natural” and “supernatural” (E. von Hartmann), “religions of nature,” “religions of morality,” and “religions of salvation” (G. Siebeck), and into folk-traditional, dualistic (acosmic), and prophetic (Söderblom), as well as into “revealed” and “non-revealed,” and so on. By the character of their origin, spread, and influence, scholars distinguish national and world religions, natural religions and religions of revelation, folk and personal religions. Geographically, religions are divided into Western, Near Eastern, Far Eastern, South Asian, and so on.

Today, however, the most widely used typology divides religions into three types:

1. Tribal — the religions of non-literate peoples;

2. National — religions that do not extend beyond the bounds of particular nations (peoples) and constitute the main foundation of their national and cultural identity (for example, Judaism, Hinduism, Shintoism);

3. World religions — religions that do not regard national or cultural boundaries as essential to spiritual experience and have spread across the entire world (Islam, Buddhism). Christianity is also counted among the world religions.

1.5 Characteristic Features of the Religions of Non-Literate Peoples

Non-literate peoples, comprising various aboriginal tribes, present one of the enduring riddles of the modern world. They exist outside the paradigms of written language, statehood, and complex, diversified economic activity. A simplistic explanation often posits that, cut off from major civilizations or crushed by a harsh climate, they were unable to “develop” and remained at the level of a primitive, pre-state existence. However, this premise is flawed.

First, why did the Australian aborigines, cut off from Asia for nearly a hundred thousand years, never create their own civilization? Why should the continent’s isolation have impeded the development of its inhabitants? Second, there are pre-literate societies that have lived for thousands of years alongside literate civilizations in North Africa, India, China, Indochina, and Siberia. The Ulchi, Orochi, and Nanai had close ties with the Chinese; the Khasi, Garo, and Naga live literally a two-hour walk from the towns of the Assamese and Bengali — peoples whose cultural history reaches back many millennia. As for natural conditions, “wild” tribes live not only on polar coasts but in countries with a temperate climate, in the subtropics, and at the equator. They are found “over the whole face of the earth” [For more, see: Zubov, A.B. A History of Religions. Book One. Moscow: Planeta Detei, 1997, pp. 180-183].

The characteristic features of the religions of non-literate peoples vary. African religions, for example, are marked by:

1. Belief in a Supreme Being, who bears a different particular name among different ethnic groups. He is acknowledged as the creator of the world and of everything in it. He is distant from people and does not concern Himself with their everyday lives (the deus otiosus concept), yet He holds power over the life and death of the individual, rewards good and punishes evil, and is the highest authority in all matters.

2. Ancestor veneration, which occupies the most important place among all other spirits. The cult of the ancestors is one of the most significant elements of most autochthonous African religions. It is grounded in traditional respect for elders and in the belief that deceased ancestors influence the everyday life of their descendants and guarantee the well-being of their kin.

3. Belief in intermediary deities who derive their strength and power chiefly from the Supreme Being and serve as a kind of intermediary between God and human beings. Some of these deities are associated with specific objects in the surrounding environment: rivers, trees, rocks, hills, and so on. However, these objects are not deities per se, as early European missionaries and pioneering scholars of traditional religions once erroneously supposed. They serve only as dwelling places for the deities, who may move about, entering one abode or leaving another.

4. Totemic beliefs — belief in a supernatural communion and kinship between particular ethnic groups, clans, kin groups, and secret societies, on the one hand, and certain animals — the leopard, buffalo, crocodile, various snakes and birds, and sometimes plants — on the other.

5. Belief in talismans, amulets, charms, and the like.

6. Belief in magic and sorcery.

[For more, see: Ismagilova, R.N. Traditional Cultures of the Peoples of Africa: Past and Present. Moscow: RAN, 2000, pp. 103-171.]

On the whole, these elements are characteristic of other non-literate peoples as well, though with shifts of emphasis and the addition of further elements. In the Russian North and among North American Indians, the most important element of religious life is shamanism, while for the Australian aborigines, belief in totems is more prominent. Totemism is also characteristic of North American Indians.

1.6 Belief in a Supreme Being

Belief in a Supreme Being, the primordial creator of the world, human beings, and animals, is one of the universally widespread elements of the religion of non-literate peoples. Most of the ethnic groups of West Africa share similar conceptions of God as a demiurge, the creator of the universe. He is the supreme deity from whom all the rest derive. Each people, or group of closely related peoples, has its own myths about the creation of the world and the order in which God carried it out.

“According to the mythology of the Yoruba (Nigeria), the supreme God Olodumare (‘the Almighty’), or Olorun (‘Lord of Heaven’), lived in the heavens with the deities. The earth was watery and fluid. God resolved to make it firm and sent a dove and a hen to scatter earthly soil over a wide area. The place from which the creation of the earth began was the town of Ife (literally ‘broad’). It is in this way, according to Yoruba belief, that their sacred city received its name. Later, in order to distinguish this town from others bearing the same name, the prefix ‘ile,’ denoting the homeland of all the Yoruba, was added.

The creation of the earth took four days, while the fifth day was a day of rest, which serves as the day of worship of Olodumare. Olodumare then sent down to earth one of the elder deities, Orishanla, to create the plant world and man, into whom Olodumare Himself breathed the spirit.” [Ismagilova, R.N. Traditional Cultures of the Peoples of Africa. Moscow: RAN, 2000, pp. 103-171.]

In the western part of Africa, from the Ivory Coast to Botswana, among many Bantu-speaking peoples, the creator of the world and the omnipotent celestial being is called Nyambe or Nyame. This term also denotes the inherent force within every being and object. Nyambe — Nyama occurs in many translations of the Bible: for many West African peoples, it proves difficult to render the concept of God the Creator in any other way. Among the various ethnic groups of West Africa, the supreme God bears a variety of names. Among the Yoruba, in addition to the general names Olodumare and Olorun, there are also Alaye (“the Living One”), Elemi (“Lord of spirit, of life”), Eleda (“Creator”), Orishe (“Source of being”), and others; among the Igbo (Nigeria) — Chineke (“Creator”), Chukwu (“Great Spirit”), Ezechitoke (“King-Creator”); among the Bini — Osanobua (“Creator of the world, the heavens, and the earth”); among the Bamum (Cameroon) — Nyinyi or Nyi (“the one who is everywhere”); among the Mende (Sierra Leone) — Ngewo (“God, Great Spirit”).

West African myths of the creation of the world reflect a definite order of creation. The Akan (Ghana) hold that God first created the heavens, then the earth, the rivers, and the vegetation. Next He created man and the animals, which grazed in the pastures and themselves served as food for man. Man, however, needed protection, and God created the spirits of the waters, forests, and mountains, who came to his aid. Subsequently, however, through man’s fault — for he violated certain prohibitions (each ethnic group has its own version of the story) — man and the animals who had lived alongside the Creator were separated from God.

Among the peoples of Ghana, in particular the Akan, the supreme deity is Nyame (Onyame), who also bears the names Onyankopon (“great forefather”), Odomankoma (“creator”), Tweduampong (“the reliable one”), Amowia (“giver of sun and light”), and Nana (“great forefather”); among the Ewe the supreme God is Mawu (Mawuga, “great God”); among the Ga He is Ata Naa Nyongmo (“forefather, God”).

There is, however, one distinctive feature that characterizes the attitude toward the Supreme Being among non-literate peoples. Having created the world, the Supreme Being withdrew and rarely — sometimes never — intervenes in worldly affairs, having entrusted oversight of the world to other beings. “Everywhere in Africa there is the conception that God has withdrawn into the heavens and is far from man. People rarely pray to Him, but His name is present in proverbs and everyday speech. He manifests His will through natural catastrophes. He is the greatest power above all magic and sorcery,” writes E. G. Parrinder.

The legends recounting the rupture between the Supreme Being and humanity vary. Most survive as myths describing an era when the heavens were physically close to humanity and people did not need to labor: they would stretch out a hand and take from heaven all that they needed. Then, in one way or another, man offended the heavens. Most often the blame is placed on a woman, who either splashed it with hot porridge or struck it with a pestle, whereupon the heavens took offense and withdrew. In some versions, man himself asked the heavens to depart. Thereafter, as a rule, God the Creator is almost forgotten, and people turn to Him only out of habit and very rarely, not making an exception even when a tribe finds itself in desperate straits. God is, as it were, bracketed out of everyday religious life. He is not prayed to, or prayed to only rarely, mainly in cases of calamity.

God can also be the object of higher religious knowledge, as among the Australian aborigines, where mysteries concerning the Supreme Being are restricted to initiated adult men. Only adult men, after several initiations, come to know His true name as well as His role and place in the world.

1.7 Totemism

The word “totem” comes from the Ojibwe, a tribe of the Algonquin people of North America. In their language, “dotem” denotes the marker of clan kinship. During the European settlement of North America, observers noted that Indian clans are often named for animals, plants, and natural forces.

Time and being began when, out of eternity, there came forth numerous beings whom the Australian aborigines call “Ancestors.” The indigenous peoples of Australia have a concept of “coming forth out of eternity” (in the Aranda language, altjiranga ngambakala) of which they themselves have only a vague awareness [For more, see: Eliade, M. Australian religions: an introduction, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973].

Prior to the emergence of these supernatural beings from eternity, the earth was unformed; there was neither sun nor stars, neither water nor mountains. The beings took various forms: some resembled particular animals, others were similar to people. Regardless of appearance, however, all of them were conscious and powerful beings of both female and male sex. Some, though they did not have the appearance of plants, were associated with them, created them, and fed upon them. Others created the animals of “their” kinds; still others created the forests and rivers and brought the heavenly bodies forth into the sky.

“Humanity, like the earth, existed as a single, undivided, embryonic mass. This mass of human embryos was carefully separated by the ‘Ancestors,’ raised up, and so the first people appeared. People are therefore not the descendants of the supernatural beings who came forth out of eternity but rather their creations. Once the world was ordered, the Ancestors retreated into a transcendent state of being, withdrawing from the space they themselves had formed. During their time in the world, they performed various deeds, partly heroic, partly profoundly immoral — incest and cannibalism among them. The legends of the activity of the Ancestors ‘in those days’ are countless among the Australians. These beings turned out to be subject to suffering and disease, but not to death. Even those who were killed were transformed into rocks and other sacred objects, in which they continue their existence. The departure of the ‘Ancestors’ from the physical world coincided with the introduction of death into the world, which occurred by accident, owing to certain wrongful actions of men and ‘Ancestors’” [Zubov, A.B. A History of Religions. Book One. Moscow: Planeta Detei, 1997, p. 208].

The places where the “Ancestors” appeared and where they departed once again are especially revered by the Australians as sacred. Sacred too are those objects (rocks, springs) into which the bodies of the Ancestors were transformed. Practically every element of the landscape is connected with some legend or sacred song; Australian mythology is bound up with the natural landscape. “It is believed that although the ‘Ancestors’ have gone, a certain spiritual trace of their presence in the world remains. It is especially apparent where they entered the world and where they left it. For this reason, such places are sacred. The entry of the uninitiated into them, outside of special ritual moments, is punishable by death” [Zubov, A.B. A History of Religions. Book One. Moscow: Planeta Detei, 1997, p. 209].

At these places, rituals are performed that reproduce those once performed by the “Ancestors” “in the beginning,” rituals that led to the emergence of the world. “The songs sung in the course of these rituals reproduce the melodies given by the ‘Ancestors,’ and their words recount the deeds of the ‘Ancestors.’ These rituals are bound up not so much with the temporal life of the Australians as with transcendent being” [Ibid.].

According to most tribes of Australia, every person has, besides a natural human soul, an “Ancestor’s” soul, which entered into him at conception or birth. The entry of this soul is governed by special rites. It determines belonging to the totemic clan. All members of such a clan are, as it were, a single whole, for they share a common totemic “soul.”

1.8 Belief in Spirits

The categorization of the spiritual world in the cosmologies of non-literate peoples is largely fluid. Formally, spirits are divided into good, evil, and neutral spirits of nature. Unlike in the religions of literate peoples — for example, the biblical or the South Asian — the quality of a spirit is not determined by its relation to the Creator. In other words, those spirits are not recognized as good because they serve God and are aligned with His will, and evil spirits the reverse. Among non-literate peoples, such an understanding is scarcely to be found. Evil spirits are usually those who harm man; good spirits are those who help him.

“Contemporary members of non-historical societies have not abandoned belief in God; rather, they have largely neglected Him… In no historical religion is so much attention paid to spirits as in the religions of non-literate peoples” [Zubov, A.B. A History of Religions. Book One. Moscow: Planeta Detei, 1997, p. 198].

The classification of spirits among the peoples of the Lower Amur is as follows:

Evil spirits — amban, who do not usually submit to people, cause illness and ill luck in hunting and fishing, and may destroy a person.

Neutral spirits — sven, who help those who “feed” them but mainly remain neutral spirits of the wild. Some have grown accustomed to living with people and have become, as it were, “domesticated”; when their owner dies, they require another person to look after them in exchange for help and protection. They may harm a person who violates the laws of their habitation. There are, for instance, numerous ritual formulas for driving away forest spirits when a traveler must relieve himself. Similar examples can be found in Vedic India. European legends of the leshy (wood spirit) are typologically similar.

Good spirits — ayami (from the Evenk aya — “good,” “dear”). These spirits are close to a person and love him in a familial way. Depending on the spirit’s age (the age of spirits does not change), they are called “daughter,” “son,” “little sister,” “father,” or “mother.” At times they were even called one’s own “wife” or “husband.” This form of kinship does not, however, presuppose intimate relations; the designation as spouse underscores a special closeness [For more, see: Smolyak, A.V. The Shaman: Personality, Functions, Worldview (the Peoples of the Lower Amur) (1991)].

1.9 Conceptions of the Human Being Among Non-Literate Peoples

In the cosmology of non-literate peoples, the human being is a multi-component entity, composed of various energies conventionally referred to as “souls.”

The first is the bodily soul. Conceptions of this entity are highly amorphous. Some respondents report that it dwells on the grave after a person’s death but, being mortal, dies itself after a time. Others report that, like the other souls, it sets out for the world of the dead. There is no consensus. This much is clear: it is bound up with the body and, to all appearances, does not possess consciousness, being a mere shadow. On the Lower Amur, it is called uksuki or oksoy. Analogous beliefs are widespread. In ancient Rome, it was held that the “shadow” of a person remained on the grave. Among the Dakota Indians, one of a person’s four souls “remains in the body” after death. The Gonds of India believe that one of the four souls “dies with the decomposition of the body.” Among the Australian aborigines, the view that after death the soul remains for a time near the body and then “dissolves into the air” is very widespread.

The second is the personal soul of the earthly individual, which departs to the world of the dead after death. It is connected with the conception and birth of the person. It exists eternally, dwelling in the spiritual world before birth. According to conceptions on the Lower Amur, it sits upon the World Tree in the form of a bird and at the moment of conception flies down into the mother’s womb. The Nanai call it panyan. For some time after birth, this soul still sees the world of the spirits, but it gradually shifts more and more toward this earthly world, forgetting the language of the spirits. In appearance, it is described as fully coinciding with the body. According to many peoples of the North, it dwells not within the human body but outside it, often wandering — something that is reflected in dreams. At best, it may be alongside the person or hang upon him. The very essence of shamanism, strictly speaking, lies in the belief that the soul of a living person can “journey at will,” and that the misfortunes that befall the soul during its wanderings cause the person grievous suffering. The soul is often abducted by spirits, and to rescue it, the shaman performs the kamlanie (shamanic ritual).

A third force within the human being is sometimes designated by a term that coincides with the name of God or of the highest spirit. An example is the Lower Amur word Enduri. The Nanai use this word for God, who dwells in the highest, ninth heaven (heaven is Enduri, Boa Enduri), and at the same time for a certain component within the person which, in their kamlaniya, the shamans see only dimly and of whose posthumous fate nothing is known.

In regions where totemic beliefs are widespread, this third soul is most often the soul of the totem. It is a component within the person, an essential particle of the ancestor-creator (see above). After death, it returns to the totemic ancestor.

1.10 Conceptions of the World of the Dead

“The Australian Kulin believe that souls ascend along the rays of the setting sun. The tribes of the Herbert River valley believe that the dead rise to the other world by way of the Milky Way. Often, however, the more ‘developed’ peoples of Oceania and America hold that only heroes and sorcerers go to the heavens. The rest of the souls remain wandering upon the earth or set out for the lands of the west, sometimes with very precise topographical specifications — the aborigines of Arnhem assign the souls of their deceased fellow tribesmen to the islands of the Torres Strait. Finally, the abode of ordinary souls may also be the netherworld. Among the New Zealand Maori, only chosen chieftains rise to the heavens, while all the rest go ‘over the ocean.’ Among the Nanai, such posthumous inequality is almost absent. All without exception, both shamans and non-shamans, go to the underground world — buni. An exception is made only for the ancient heroes” [Zubov, A.B. A History of Religions. Book One. Moscow: Planeta Detei, 1997, p. 233].

Whereas for historical (literate) peoples Heaven remains the ultimate aspiration, among non-literate peoples it is frequently disregarded entirely. The dead go beneath the earth. The Nanai and Ulchi are at the same time certain that the “subterranean world” is in every respect similar to the earthly one, except that it is richer in game and fish. Most Africans hold similar views, describing the world beyond as a mirror of the earthly world, with the same villages, natural landscapes, and rivers.

“Moral conduct does not determine a soul’s success in reaching the realm of the dead and joining the other souls. Punishment for sins is absent, and the only thing that is tested is the level of initiations. Insofar as there are differences in the posthumous existence of souls, they derive entirely from the rituals in which those souls took part and from the religious knowledge they acquired during their lifetime. In other words, posthumous existence depends on the degree of their initiation,” states Mircea Eliade in his book Australian Religions, speaking not only of the Australians but of other non- literate peoples as well. “A primary peculiarity of archaic conceptions of death and the afterlife is an indifference to moral values. It appears that in this respect morality is essential exclusively for people who are in the embodied state, but is not essential in the posthumous state, which is exclusively a ‘spiritual’ form of being. This ‘spiritual’ form is, first and foremost, sensitive to the power of rituals and to the ‘saving knowledge’ acquired in the land of the living” [For more, see: Eliade, M. Australian religions: an introduction, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973].

Bibliography:

Encyclopedia of African Religion, - Molefi Asante, Sage Publications, 2009

Beier, Ulli, ed. The Origins of Life and Death: African Creation Myths. London: Heinemann, 1966

Eliade M. Australian religions: an introduction, Ithaca Cornell University Press 1973

Eliade M. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy 1964

Gbadagesin, Segun. African Philosophy: Traditional Yoruba Philosophy and Contemporary African Realities. New York: Peter Lang, 1999.

Mbiti, John. African Religions and Philosophy 1969

Parrinder, Geoffrey. African Traditional Religion, Third ed. London: Sheldon Press, 1974.

Soyinka, Wole, Myth, Literature and the African World. Cambridge University Press, 1976.

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