culture(or Bacchus), which embraces madness, sexuality, and ecstatic trance
states. The Greek historian Herodotus discusses a group of initiates wan-
dering aimlessly at night overcome with madness and ecstatic states. The
phallus is often used to stress iconographical depictions of male genera-
tive power and sexuality by members.
Ecstatic trance states also play a role in the cult of Meter (mother god-
dess). Cult members endure pain while engaged in ecstatic trance states.
Some ecstatic dancers castrate themselves while in such a state, which
signifies an offering of their male virility to the goddess, and they there-
after serve the goddess as her eunuch priests. The cult includes the tau-
robolium or bull sacrifice, which features castrating a bull and sprinkling
the blood from its testicles on the initiates crouching in a pit underneath
the platform where the sacrifice occurs. The various Greek cults stress
secrecy, personal choice, and the promise of a direct experience of
the holy.
Further reading: Burkert (1987); Detienne (1989); Johnston (2004); Lewis
(1971); Stark and Bainbridge (1985)
CULTURE
The concept begins with the Latin term colere, an etymological root of
the terms cultus and colonize. The notion originally refers to cultivating
crops and animals. Then, it changes to mean human development, sug-
gesting the cultivation of people. From this meaning, it evolves to indi-
cate an abstract state of achieved development grounded on products of
educated or creative people that come to form a collection or body of
artistic works. In a general sense, culture is the totality of a social, his-
torical, and creative heritage of human beings who represent a particular
social group. A particular culture includes the human products of a soci-
ety with a shared history and location. These human products include
language, art and architecture, style of dress, distinct foods, social
behavior, music, intellectual heritage, ethics, a legal system, govern-
ment, religion, and a worldview. Although there may be periods when it
appears to be stationary, a particular culture is never completely static. In
many cultures devoid of secularism and/or advanced technology, the reli-
gion and culture are so intertwined that it is difficult to differentiate them.
Thus, in some cases, religion and culture are nearly synonymous with
each other.