as this line of argument suggests that spontaneous tears are
“real,” whereas ritual tears are not, it is misleading. In effect,
to distinguish true and false tears in this way is to universalize
the Western bourgeois and Protestant privileging of the indi-
vidual as the ultimate locus of value. Moreover, it premature-
ly forecloses serious inquiry into the distinct local discourses
about tears and the body. Finally, to imply that “primitives”
are hopelessly controlled by “custom” is to deny that they can
willfully act for their own intents and purposes. It also ig-
nores the ways in which people everywhere at times use the
cultural expectations concerning emotional displays for spe-
cific purposes. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that
social and cultural “feeling rules” do inform ritualized weep-
ing and other affective displays. Cultural capital is often
gained by following such affective scripts, but we must also
take account of those affective displays that challenge the sta-
tus quo.
TEARS AS SUBSTANCE, SIGN, AND SYMBOL. Tears sometimes
function as a powerful substance in religious ritual practices
or in myths. That is, the actual physical tears themselves are
believed to have specific powers. In the Middle East, for ex-
ample, tears have been collected in tiny glass bottles for their
healing qualities for thousands of years. Two examples illus-
trate how one aspect of the phenomenology of tears—their
salinity—has been adapted to local ecological and agricultur-
al conditions in symbolic form. During the annual dry sea-
son, as well as in periods of extended drought, the Aztecs per-
formed rain rituals which incorporated sacrifice and ritual
weeping. More than being mere expressions of grief, it was
believed that the saline tears shed by participants produced
rain by flowing down to the moist and rotting underworld
where fresh water was trapped. Like the salt water of the sea,
tears had the power to desiccate the land and to wither the
crops. Just as Aztec agricultural practices required them to
control and direct the salt water from the great Mexican
basin in order to irrigate crops with fresh water, tears, too,
were controlled and ritually directed. The ritual tears flowed
down, causing the release and counter flow of fresh produc-
tive water from underworld springs.
These Aztec ritual tears recall those shed by Susano-o,
a Japanese deity, in a myth recounted in the Kojiki (712 CE).
Like the Aztec rituals, the Susano-o myth cycle is closely re-
lated to the local ecology, agricultural cycle, and irrigation
practices. After the death of Izanami, the spouse of Susano-
o’s father, and her descent to the underworld, Susano-o was
appointed to rule the realm of the ocean (a variant found in
the Nihon shoki [720 CE] says the underworld). Susano-o,
however, refused: “He wept and howled until his beard ex-
tended down over his chest for a length of eight hands. His
weeping was so violent that it caused the verdant mountains
to wither and all the rivers and waters to dry up” (Philippi,
1968, p. 72) Here, too, salty tears shed over the dead threat-
en to destroy the fertility of the land.
Although tears are sometimes powerful substances,
more often they function as highly charged symbols and
signs. As signs, ritual tears exaggerate human emotions and
interpersonal relationships for dramatic effect. Mourning
rites often include ritual weeping, with stylized performances
of grief. Weeping here may be an expression of felt emotion,
but it need not be. It may also help to create a sense of social
solidarity, as Durkheim first suggested, but frequently ritual
weeping publicly displays the social and moral status of the
deceased and his or her family. One might say that in many
cultures ritual tears are the measure of the man. The death
of a great man (however that be defined) provokes intense
and extensive weeping, whereas a dead man for whom few
people weep risks being perceived to have been a “small” man
in many ways. Similarly, weeping for the bride in marriage
rites marks a rite of passage, a separation of a woman from
her natal family, and her reincorporation into a new family.
The sadness in parting may be real, but we must also note
that the “worth” of a bride may also be measured in part by
the depth of feelings of loss that are publicly displayed by rel-
atives.
Ritualized tears also are used strategically or politically
to “say” things by those who are powerless or who occupy
a socially inferior position. In the ancient Near East, for ex-
ample, a widow, orphan, or resident alien could get a hearing
from the king by calling out to him, throwing herself pros-
trate before him, and crying. In II Samuel 14 is an example
of this: Joab asks a woman to dress as a widow and approach
King David to appeal for his mercy on Absalom. The ruse
succeeds precisely because of the cultural expectation that a
good king is one who protects the weak, the powerless, and
the poor. Not to respond to the tearful pleas of a widow
could open the king to whispered criticism and even his
branding as a bad ruler. Significantly, in the Psalms and else-
where King David himself reportedly shed copious tears of
the same sort as this “widow”; that is, King David’s ritual
tears participated in the same cultural politics of affective dis-
play. However, in this case, when David wept and appealed
to Yahweh, he effectively placed himself in the inferior and
debased position relative to God, whereas he was in the supe-
rior position relative to the widow. In other words, insofar
as God was imagined as a king writ large, even human kings
had to appeal to Him through the same sort of stylized affec-
tive display.Scholars have only begun to investigate the ritual display
of emotions and, alternatively, the control of them. We will
fully appreciate such rituals, and understand the rich multi-
tude of literary and artistic representations of tears, only by
carefully noting how specific aspects of the phenomenologi-
cal nature of tears have been exploited, adopted, and adapted
by specifically situated persons in their own efforts to create
religious and moral worlds of meaning. Medieval Japanese
poets often equated tears with the dew, employing the poetic
conceit of “dew on [one’s] sleeves,” for instance, to suggest
the tears shed by a sensitive person. Although the Japanese
poets stressed the ephemeral nature of the dew and tears
(and, by extension, human feelings), the evidence of the his-9026 TEARS