71102.pdf

meant that some people, probably equipped with the mysterious organevur,would profit from the accident or death. Who the witches ...

gossip, for this disclosure and explicit description of the situation immediately make him or her an ally of the victims. So the ...

it in highly dramatic rituals. This is totally different from a form of modern "pagan" religion that calls itself "witchcraft" a ...

is very clear in the Kwaio case. As Roger Keesing reports, "When an illness or misfortune occurs, a father or neighbor will brea ...

cally aware people would notice that more or less everybody catches some disease at some point, that not all operations are alwa ...

some events are such that they naturally suggest questions (Why me? Why now?) that are simply not answered in terms of ordinary ...

This is odd. If our thoughts about misfortunes were designed to avoid further occurrences, it would make much more sense to focu ...

Notions about the evil eye activate that mental system too, but put the victim in a different situation. On the surface, it woul ...

conditions. In traditional beliefs the witches were relatives or in-laws; one had to identify them to solve the problem. In more ...

intuitions about exchange and fairness. We know that these systems are constantly active. In a social species such as homo sapie ...

GODS AND SPIRITS ARE PARASITIC Religious concepts are particularly successful because people repre- sent them in a way that make ...

6 WHY IS RELIGION ABOUT DEATH? Dead people, like vegetables, can be pickled or preserved. You can also abandon them to the beast ...

Last Judgement. Or they come back in another form. The connection between notions of supernatural agents and representations abo ...

real and potential danger. Humans are also aware of the generality of death and of its inevitability. Indeed, social psychologis ...

promise some kind of escape from death that is conditional on good behavior, that is, on adherence to the local norms. Terror-ma ...

Considering this mental background should help us solve several mysteries in the religious treatment of the topic. Anthropologis ...

where baroque death rituals are associated with precise and compli- cated descriptions of what death is.^5 Hunter-gatherers, who ...

or touch it. During this period the rest of the community is supposed to gather every night, sing and dance and generally make a ...

soul only remembers those who remember him and only reveals him- self to those who saw him alive." In other places the dead rema ...

The presence of the recently dead is far more likely to be dangerous than reassuring. For one thing, people give many accounts o ...