:Intro to Religion Blog

I have been working on my project for about a week and a half, and I feel I have gotten some good pictures. I am by no means a photographer but I have always liked to edit pictures, so I thought I could get some decent pictures and make them look good through editing them. Even though I was supposed to go on Tuesday, I was really glad to get the chance to watch other peoples presentation to calm my nerves a little. I felt I have given a lot of time and effort into my project because it did take so long to take all the pictures go through and edit them all and them figure out how I would incorporate them together in a creative way. I hope all my effort shows through on my project/presentation!

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This class has been very interesting for me, I came in not knowing a lot about different religions and the different aspects of them. I was very interesting the the pilgrimages and how there are different types, such as Turner and Eliade. I discovered that pilgrimages aren’t only in religions, because it would be an every day adventure but be considered a pilgrimage, such as a vacation or a trip to camp when you were younger. I always understood Turner’s model more because it was a set up map with directions, while Eliade’s is just different things you are looking at such as a sacred space, or axis mundi. Over all I have enjoyed this class and I am hoping to do well on my presentation and my final to keep my grade a good level.

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Last week we talked about an Elvis religion, I thought this was a weird religion. According to all the “rules” there are to having a religion it does fit the criteria, but I still wouldn’t consider it a religion. Most of the religions we have talked about have a person or ultimate reality that have created the earth or different parts of it. The last time I check Elvis didn’t create anything in the world (besides for his wonderful music). There is a pilgrimage for this religion as well, which also has all the keep points needed to be a religious pilgrimage, but again it could also just be for a tourist who loves Elvis. To these people that are part of the Elvis religion this is a very real thing and they take it very seriously.

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What we learned about Goddess pilgrimages on Tuesday of this week was that it is a feminist based religion and is all about nature. We learned that feminist thealogy is a very nature based religion; the Goddess will give birth to the Horned God, and then marry him, and then sacrifices himself to her. When all of these events happen it is a different season. When he is born its winter, when he gets married its summer, and when he sacrifices himself to the Goddess it is autumn. All of these are examples of why the Goddess pilgrimage is part of thealogy.

Different elements that make this pilgrimage and actual pilgrimage, it has travel, community, sacred space, tradition/ritual, relics, and embodiment of myth.  The example of travel is that during the Goddess pilgrimage you take a journey to many different goddess sites, which is also an example of sacred space, not just one but many. Community is defiantly there because there are many followers of the Goddess pilgrimage that come together as feminist. Embodiment of myth has an example above about the Goddess and the Horned God, there are many more stories going along with this pilgrimage.

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On Tuesday we talk about the pilgrimage to Varanasi/Benares, there are five different ways you can go about this pilgrimage, which I thought was very interesting. This city is located on the Ganges River, the first way to do the pilgrimage is the largest and it is 168 miles of walking around the area of the river and city. The next largest is 55 miles, then 15 miles which would be circling the whole city. The next one is going throughout the city and making various stops all around the city and the smallest is actually inside the Vishveshvara temple its self. This temple is the axis mundi of the city and the pilgrimage, because you start at this point and you also end at this point. Thought out this pilgrimage there are 72 shrines for Shiva, which is the God of destruction.

While talking about this pilgrimage we learned a few new words including Puja, ghat, and Mondula. Puja is another name for worship, and when you are referring to a God you are worshiping you put the god’s name first. So for this pilgrimage it would be Shiva Puja because they are worshiping Shiva. Ghat is a word that is referred to the stairs that lead down to the Ganges River, this river is the most holy place in this city, and people come from all over to get their sins washed away by this river. Last is mondula which means circling, because circles are very important to this religion going back to how they believe that everything comes from one thing (Brahman) and live is just one big circle. When people worship they tend to have a lot of motions that involves circles because of the belief that everything is one.

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Tuesday we learned about non-western religions, most oriented from China, Japan, and India. The three things that make them different from a western religion was that they are monistic, nonlinear, and praxis. Unlike monotheism, monistic means that it is one non-personal ultimate reality, this was kind of a hard concept to understand considering I grew up in the western religion, having one personal god, who was simulated as a person instead of a thing. When we discussed Hinduism it was very interesting to me that they think of everything as being equal and made from the same thing, called Brahman. The definition I would give karma is definitely not the actually definition of karma, I also found that very interesting.

Next we talked about how they were nonlinear religions, meaning it has a circular time line. This was crazy to think about that in another life time you could have been a plant or an animal, I like how they believe this because of all the karma that they have over a lifetime. The last thing we discussed was the praxis, or the practices they perform. These religions are all about what they do, not what they say. They believe that the only way they can make good karma is by doing all the practices that they talk about, saying it just isn’t good enough. I learned a lot on Tuesday about non-western religions.

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Yesterday we did an Islam pilgrimage called a Hajji, and simulated all the parts that are involved in it. I liked the creative ways Jessica came up with to do all the different parts to the pilgrimage. First we had to purify our hands and feet (we just rinsed our hands with water), next we had to circumambulate around the Ka’aba seven times, for our Ka’aba we had a chair covered in clothe. After doing these two steps then we went over by the library where we had to run between two hills seven times, much like Hagar had to do to find water for her son Ishmael. When we were done running between the hills we got a drink of water much like Hagar drank from the stream when she finally found water. The next thing you do on the Hajji is stand on the top of Arafat for a whole day in silence, no movement, and thinking about the Day of Judgment. For this we stood on the hill by the science center for a minute, this was difficult for some, but it is supposed to be the most fulfilling part of the pilgrimage, or Eliade would say it is the metaphorical death. The next thing we did was throw stones at the three pillars that represent the devil, for this we threw ping pong balls at the sculpture in front of the library. I thought this was a very creative way to simulate this event; it was also my favorite part! After you are done with all those steps you back to the Ka’aba and circumambulate it seven times again. The last step to the pilgrimage is the sacrificing of the lamb, much like in Judaism this is a way of making the meat Kosher, but in Islam it is called Halal.

I fell I will remember this pilgrimage the best because we actually preformed it. This also made it much easier to understand rather than just trying to read a section over it. I wish we could do this for every pilgrimage!

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I learned a lot about Judaism in class yesterday, I started off knowing mostly nothing so I could only go up from there. We learned that it is a monotheistic religion, textual religion, religion of the land, and ritual oriented religion.

Being a monotheistic religion there is one personal God named YHWH. One of the commandments is to not take God’s name in vain, so in the Bible they take the vowels of Adonai which means lord and puts them in the word YHWH as a clue to not say God’s name in vain. I thought this was a very creative way of reminding people to not say God’s name in vain. The textual part of the religion is the Bible, the story I learned about while talking about this part is the story of Abraham and how he had two wives, and each had one child. Through his wife Hagar they had a son named Ishmael, and the religion that came through him was Islam. Through Sarah, Abraham’s other wife, they had a son named Isaac (which means gigglesJ) through him came the religion Judaism which later came Christianity. The ritual oriented part of the religion I thought was very interesting all the different things they do and the things that can’t eat. They can’t eat shell fish, pork, and they can’t mix milk and meat. Also they can’t touch, or touch anything that a menstruating woman has touched. I found this very odd, I feel there’s no harm that comes from doing such a thing.

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In the center of the world part of the Sacred Space reading, I thought it was interesting the way they perceived the world, heaven, and the underworld. What connects all these worlds is an axis mundi, which in this case I think the easiest one to visualize is a ladder. Using objects such as mountains or trees are good because these are all objects you are able to climb and the whole point of a pilgrimage is movement, and the journey someone takes.

The ladder starts on earth in the center of the world, or the naval. After reading all the sections of the Sacred Space, I realized there is a naval or a center of the world to almost everything you’re involved in within your life. We talked about in class, in the home a family room or fireplace is an example of the naval of the home, in a church the front of the church with the alter is the naval. What I got out of this reading is that the naval can be where ever you want it to be, it is always surrounded by things that are important to you.

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What I got out of the article we read about Frazer is that he believed that magic cam first, and when magic didn’t work the society moved to religion, and he believes that when the society believes that religion has failed us we will move to magic. Some of me believes that this has a possibility of happening, science is a big part of today’s world. Religion also it, but instead of praying for things to happen we have the technology to make things happen. Most people would find this a lot easier because they were in control of what was happening and a lot of people like control.

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