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From: <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, September 25, 1999 3:00 PM
Subject: Re: religious mentality and farming
[...]
> In a study of calendar customs, STATIONS OF THE SUN, Ronald
> Hutton points out (in the concluding chapter of a very dense and
> detailed work) that many of the "pagan residues" discovererd by
> folklorists could more accurately be called "catholic residues"
> (or, if you prefer, "residues of pre-protestant Christianity.")
> For example, when farmers cicumambulate a field with a statue
> of St. John to ensure fertility, is this a pagan practice or a
> Christian one? Possibly they originally used an image of Freyr, but
> the replacement of Freyr by St. John would have taken place some time
> in the 9th - 12th centuries (my example is Scandinavian), and for
> the following 500 years or so the farmers would have been very
> insulted by claims that they were performing pagan rituals.
>
[...]
Am I right in assuming that this example is in the book?
I wonder what they relied on before Freyr? Using recognised religious
authority objects to authenticate such temporal matters as property claims
and as a bit of supernatural help (good claim/good crop) must have gone on
for pretty much all of the agricultural phase of human existence. If the
field won't go to Mohammed, then Mohammed must go to the field. The process
itself is neither 'pagan' nor 'christian' but social, serving to consolidate
a particular order. Is marriage a christian or pagan process? Ask a swan.
Territorial boundaries? Ask an elephant seal. It is just that different
cultures put their individual glosses on it. Then it is a question of
sanction. What did Tom Lehrer say/sing?
'Do whatever steps you want if
you have cleared them with the Pontiff'
There are some processes that underlie human activity for which a religion
merely provides an interface. Ritual, the formalised sequencing of
behaviours, is one of those. Internet Web Browsers are a good analogy.
Which one are you using? Is yours pagan, or christian? Did it matter?
Does it now? What if I said that Internet Explorer was indubitably pagan?
Netscape on the other hand... (!)
Please note that I am not saying that the only purpose of religion is to
supply ritual interfaces! (cf. Thomas Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer).
Was there not such a rational concept of underlying process in the medieval
church? Any examples?
Regards
John A.W. Lock
>
> Margaret Cormack [log in to unmask]
> Dept. of Philosophy and Religion fax: 843-953-6388
> College of Charleston tel: 843-953-8033
> Charleston, SC 29424-0001
>
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