Thursday, January 24, 2013

Primal Religions Questions

1. Some forms of religions are called primal because some of these religions came before the other more basic religions and are more important than other religions.

2. The elements of the natural and human world that the Ancestors created or established during the period of the Dreaming was the formation of life and the creation of human beings. They were given certain rights and languages.

3. Spirits survive in the symbols left behind by the Ancestors.

4. The term taboo is forbidden to profane use because of the things that are considered to be dangerous supernatural powers. The term totem is an object that remind families of their ancestors.

5. Ritual is essential if Aboriginal life has meaning because it is only in certain rituals that dreaming can be seen.

6. Aboriginal rituals originated by those people who create the world through dreaming where each ritual is an reenactment of a myth of certain actions of an Ancestor during the dreaming.

7. Initiation rituals awaken the adolescence that redefine their social identity in a tribe.

8. Two acts of Dieri initiation rituals that symbolize death are two lower middle teeth that were knocked out and then buried in the ground and circumcision.

9. The Yoruba live in the western areas of Africa.

10. The city of life has always been the center of Yoruba religion because the Yoruba believe that the god Orish-nla created the world of life.

11. The Yoruba's understanding of the cosmos was that there were two separate worlds, heaven and earth. The other forms of human beings were called witches and sorcerers who caused chaos. Humans tried hard to maintain the balance between the gods so that the witches and sorcerers would not do evil deeds.

12. Olorun is the superior god of the Yoruba religion, which originally came from the power source of the universe.

13. Orishas are lower than the Olorun. Their role is to act as a mediator between the gods and the Olorun.

14. Two of the Orishas are the Orish-nla and Ogun. The Yoruba believed that the Orish-nla created the earth. The Ogun was the god of war and iron.

15. A trickster figure is a deceptive person who appears in several forms in many cultures.

16. The two types of Yoruba ancestors are family ancestors and diefied ancestors. Family ancestors gained their status by earning a good reputation, whereas the diefied ancestors were important human figures in Yoruba society who were worshiped in large numbers.

17. The role of Yoruba ritual practitioners is to meditate between the god and heaven, and humans and earth.

18. Divination is the act that seeks to foresee future events or discover hidden knowledge by interpreting omens. The Yoruba consider it to be essential because it is important to proceed one's future.

19. Scholars believe human beings first came to North America by migrating from Asia to the Bering Strait.

20. The religion of the Plain Indians is of vital interest among native peoples throughout North America because their religion represents Native American religion.

21. Wakan Tanka is the Lakota name for supreme reality.

22. Inktomi means spider. The Lakota trickster figure taught the first humans their ways and customs.

23. Lakota believes that once a person dies, one of their four spirits travels the Milky Way. The soul can either become an ancestor or a ghost on earth.

24. Individuals try to gain access to spiritual power to guarantee better success in hunting and warfare.

25. The structure and function of the sweat lodge is to represent the universe. They believe that it leads to purification.

26. A typical vision experienced by a person who undertakes a vision quest arrives in the form of an animal, object, or force. The medicine man is the one who tells the vision to the others.

27. A woman tribe presides over the Sun Dance in the Blackfeet tribe.

28. The axis mundi is an entity that connects heaven and earth. It is the cottonwood tree in the Sun Dance.

29. Some participants in the Sun Dance skewer their chests and dance until their flesh rears because they believe that their bodies is the only true they own and is the only suitable sacrifice to offer to the supreme being.

30. The Aztec traditions show the description of primal religions because in a developed sense. The Aztecs have emphasis on the relationships between myths and rituals.

31. The geographical area of Mesoamerica included most of Mexico, extending to Honduras, Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

32. According to Aztec cosmetology, Quetzalcoatl was the god that created and order the world. The ancient city of Teotihuacan is the origin of the cosmos.

33. Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl was the god's earthly devotee that ruled as a priest king. He was significant to the Aztecs because they believed that he presided over the golden age of Aztec cultural brilliance and proved that they were a perfect role model for their own authoritative figures.

34. The Aztecs called their present age The Age of the Fifth Sun because they thought that their sun would be destroyed like the other four suns.

35. The Aztecs understood the spatial world as having four quadrants that extended out the center of the universe and connected the earthly realm to heaven and the underworld.

36. The Aztecs regarded each human being as a sort of axis mundi because the head and heart are considered to be as potent for the nourishment for the sun and the cosmos.

37. The special religious capabilities of the Aztec knowers of things were the communication with gods and the offerings through language.

38. The historical coincidence that contributed in the fall of Tenochtitlan to the Spaniards was that the Tenochtitlan believed Cortez was the return of Quetzalcoatl, but Cortez ended up conquering them.

39. The popular Day of the Dead shows the survival of Aztec religious cultures by celebrating modern day Aztecs that performed similar rituals as the ones they used to practice.

40. The three these that are shared by the primal religions studied in this chapter are the boundaries between the supernatural and human worlds, that religion is encompassing, and primal religions are constantly changing.

No comments:

Post a Comment