What is Totemism | Totemism Beliefs 66

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Totemism
Totemism is a mystical relationship of people with a plant or animal or some natural phenomena. The members who constitute a totemic group constitute a kinship unit. Totemism Definition According to Herbert Spencer, if a particular group or individual is protected or saved by a plant or an animal, their descendants enshrine a feeling of obedience and respect to that species. With the passage of time, this respect or obedience led to totemism. According to Ancy Haddon, In the beginning a particular group might have lived on a particular species for their survival. This species might have also been a medium of exchange. With the passage of time, this group might have been referred to or identified with that species and thus would have led to totemism. According to James Frazer, Primitive man might have developed a production and consumption club. In this club it was the duty of the group to preserve items meant for consumption. In this manner, the area of responsibility for preservation of certain objects was different for different groups. Each group might have been identified with the objects they collect and preserve which might have led to totemism.

Frazer also propounded certain alternative theories. In primitive people a belief existed where they thought that any harm or an attempt to life can be avoided when the human soul exists or takes refuge in another plant or animal. Because of the existence of human soul in another plant or animal, that particular species itself becomes sacred. Another theory of Frazer accounts for the lack of knowledge of how the women conceive. According to some primitive people the ancestors' souls exist in

certain centers which influence the women's impregnation and conception of these ancestors again. According to Hopkins, primitive people used to perceive the plants or animals as their parents because they take care of their hunger and other Notes on Totemism needs. From Source: Emile Durkheim , The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Chapter 7 this belief totemism took shape. According to Tylor, primitive people believe that the soul of the Overview dead ancestor would reside in a plant or animal and the latter would protect the group. This belief might have led to totemism. Golden Wiser: According to him two factors have led to the birth of totemism. The religious factor is the belief in the supernatural beings in some objects led to totemism. The social factor, the belief that a particular species is the protector of the group led to totemism. According to him, totemism has a psycho-social flavor. Characteristics of Totemism
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. The members in a society who have the common totem constitute a kin unit such as clan. Totemic groups are exogamous. Members of totemic group enshrine special emotional feelings with, the totems. Death of the totem is ceremoniously mourned. The members of a clan do not eat or kill or destroy the totem. The members conduct periodic ceremonies for the perpetuation of the totem. The members usually believe in the rebirth of the totem.

The belief that people are descended from animals, plants, and other natural objects. Symbols of these natural ancestors, known as totems, are often associated with clans (groups of families tracing common descent). By representing desirable individual qualities (such as the swiftness of a deer) and helping to explain the mythical origin of the clan, totems reinforce clan identity and solidarity. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/totemism

In the Elementary forms of religious life, Durkheim seeks to show that society is the soul of religion that society is the foundation of all religious belief. Religion has its origins in totemism. Totems are collective symbols that represent both god and society. Therefore the primary purpose of religion is to allow a people to imagine its society and express its social unity this explains the enduring relevance of religion (not to give a physical account of the world but to bind a people together). The collective thought of which totemism is an early expression is the basis of all religious thought, as well as philosophy and modern science. 1) What is a totem?

Totems tend to be based on relatively insignificant animals or plants lizard, rat, caterpillar. Not cosmic things that would give rise to great and powerful feelings stars, sun moon. If the feelings totems inspired were of this order, the focus of the cult would be the animal or plant itself, but it is not it is representations that are sacred. Therefore, totemism is symbolic: the totem is a symbol, a material expression of something else. But of what? God and society. Therefore, god and society are one and the same: if the totem is both the symbol of god and of society, are these not one and the same? The god of the clan must therefore be the clan itself but transfigured and imagined in the physical form of the plant or animal species that serve as totems. So how did this come about? 2) From where does society derive its power over the individual?

Society exerts a powerful hold over us: we are constantly forced to submit to rules of thought and behaviour that we have neither devised nor desired, and that are sometimes even contrary to our most basic inclinations and instincts. Societys power is derived from its moral authority, rather than its coercive power. Custom and opinion are more important than courts and prisons. Authority is the daughter of opinion even the authority of science depends on opinion. However, social forces work in obscure ways and are not always perceived as social forces. An example from work Are you busy? Not really a question but an assertion of expectation, though this is not obvious to either party. These social forces penetrate the individual and become an integral part of his being, as in Freuds superego. Social forces also enlarge our being. Durkheim goes on to discuss crowd psychology: Within a crowd, we become susceptible to feelings and actions of which we are incapable on our own. You only have to think of a rock concert, political protest or party conference, baptists speaking in tongues 1

and laying on hands or Hitler at Nuremburg to see that this is the case. Public meetings are essential to keeping social sentiments alive. These social forces (opinion and collective activity) create moral consciousness. Because social forces work in obscure ways and because they are largely beyond our control (language, customs, opinions), moral consciousness is experienced as if it was divinely invested i.e. as if it was the product of external agency and was not socially contingent. However, moral consciousness is invested by society. This is moral consciousness, which the ordinary man has never distinctly imagined for himself except with the aid of religious symbols. He could not escape the feeling that outside him there are powerful causes whic h are the source of his characteristic nature, benevolent powers that aid him, and assure him a privileged fate. And he necessarily granted those powers a dignity comparable to the great value of the benefits he attributed to them. Durkheim then shows how the two primary influences on man, the empirical/physical and the collective/social, result in him splitting the world into two distinct categories sacred and profane. The experience of these two external pressures, one tangible and one intangible, create two different orders of experience. The physical world inspires no special respect (profane), while the social world inspires veneration (sacred). Discussion of Australian societies and the corroboree religious festivals at which all social conventions are flouted. Tribe gets together. Men and women, initiates and uninitiated take part. Religious effervescence: boomerangs are banged together, bull roarers are whirled, rules on exogamy are breached. This derangement of the senses contrasts sharply with the daily life and the festivals give their participants a sharper sense of the sacred and profane worlds, as both are fully realised. This effervescence is the basis of religious feeling. 3) How does social authority become embodied in a totem?

Totems are the clans flag. The religious feelings inspired by society are therefore projected onto the totem. The totem is the clans flag. It is therefore natural that the feelings the clan awakens in individual consciousness are much more attached to the totem than to the clan. The clan is too complex a reality for such rudimentary minds to picture clearly its concrete unity. (Theres the inevitable chicken and egg problem here. Which came first, religious thought or the totem? How can you have a totem without religious thought? Durkheim remains silent.) The totem becomes the image of the clan and, psychologically, takes priority over it a complex reality is represented in simple form. Same with national flags, or wearing black when in mourning. Complex entities simply represented. 4) The nature and validity of religion

First in the world, fear created the gods. Durkheim refutes this the gods were firstly friends, relations and protectors. 2

Religion arose from society and man responds to society spontaneously and without resistance. His relationship with society is not experienced as yielding to coercion but responding to his inner nature. Durkheim also refutes naturalist and animist views of religion, e.g. Frazers naturalist view of reli gion as a response to the cyclical nature of the seasons. Man did not create religion from observation of the physical world. From the tangible, we can only make the tangible. Religion is not illusory, it is not a hallucination, it is rooted in social reality. Why does religion endure? Why do millions of people around the world adhere to the beliefs of Palestinian pastoralists who lived two thousand years ago? Because its primary role is not to describe the nature of the physical world but to enable us to imagine and represent our own society. Religious acts are not futile. God is merely the symbolic expression of society. This is why militant atheists like Dawkins and Dennett have got religion wrong. They see religions as theories about the origins and functioning of the world that are thoroughly superseded by modern physics and biology. They show no understanding of religion as a set of practices which give meaning to peoples lives by rooting them in a particular culture and giving them a sense of their collective being. 5) Why represent the clan through a totem and why choose a totem from the world of animals and plants?

We have seen how social authority impresses itself on the individual, how social authority acquires a religious dimension and how religious feelings are expressed in totems. But why are totems consistently borrowed from the animal and plant worlds? Symbolism is necessary to collective life. An emblem is a convenient and necessary shorthand for expressing social unity. Without symbolism, social feelings could not last long and would only have a precarious existence. Social life, then, in every aspect and throughout its history, is only possible thanks to a vast body of symbolism. Groups often express their solidarity through marking their bodies (sailors tattoos, early Christians would mark themselves with a cross). The purpose of this, as with totems, is not to evoke the object but to bear witness to a shared moral life. These emblems should be close and familiar (the sailors anchor tattoo) and should be capable of representation. Therefore, clans would take the essential elements of the natural world and of economic life as their totems. 6) Collective thought as the basis of all religion, philosophy and science

Collective thought, through totemism and religious expression enabled humans to step into a world beyond mere sensory impressions, a conceptual world of hidden correspondences. This allowed them to make internal connections between disparate things (e.g. associating a man with a kangaroo) and find hidden causes for things that previously remained invisible. The crucial thing was not to let the mind submit to appearances but, on the contrary, to teach it to dominate them and bring together what the senses would keep apart. (Without contraries is no progression.) 3

To say that a man is a kangaroo, that the sun is a bird, is this not identifying one thing with another? But we do not think any differently when we say that heat is movement, that light is a vibration in the ether, and so on. Every time we yoke together heterogeneous terms by an internal bond, we are of necessity identifying contraries. The genesis of this mode of thinking, which informs all philosophy and science, depends on collective thought, which allowed us to enter into a conceptual realm independent of sense perception.

Totemism in india

The term totem refers to natural object or item either inanimate or animate with which a group of individuals identify themselves.The system of mystical attachment of groups of people with totems is called totemism.The group that observes totemism is called a totemic group.A totem may be a plant,or an animal or even an object like a rock.The members of a totemic group distinguish themselves from other groups by wearing totemic emblems as charms and by painting or tattooing the figure of the totem on the walls of their houses,canoes,weapons and even their body.A prominent exhibit is the construction and erection of a totem pole representing the figure of the totem which is generally carved or painted in the locality where the specific group members reside.

Totemism is widely prevalent in tribal India.The Santhals have hundreds of totemic groups named after plants,animals or objects.The Gonds have a goat clan whose members regard the goat as their totem because a goat which had been stolen by their ancestors for sacrifice turned into a pig when the theft was discovered and thus saved the thieves from punishment. The Kamar tribe have totemic groups named as Netam( tortoise),Sori(a jungle creeper),Wagh Sori(tiger),Nag Sori( snake),Kunjam(goat) and so on. The Netam were saved by a tortoise at the time of the deluge.Among the Toda the buffaloes are the revered totems.Most of the rituals have to do with buffaloes and the treatment of their milk.The Oraons erect wooden totem posts and make occasional offering to them.Totemism is thus an integral part of the tribal India