It's been a not-so-easy ten days or so again. Some physical issues, depression, unnecessary stress. You know, the kind of thing that probably half of my readers struggle with at some time, and the other half at some other time. My life is consumed by the monotheism manuscript, which is good, but--as my dad always said and presumably still would if I asked him--you can only keep that rubber band stretched for so long before it loses its elasticity. Some of you thought I was going to say "before it snaps," but that's not how either rubber bands or human psyches work. Rubber bands snap by being stretched too far or by being in constant motion while stretched, not just by being held stretched for a long time. That just makes them useless after a while. On the other hand, if you keep them in drawer for a few years without stretching them they get crumbly and fall apart when you try to use them. So, a gentle rhythm of stretching and relaxing is what it takes for the perfect balance. But now I'm talking about something of which I have no experience.

Pastor Eugene A. Curry's article: "The Disbelieving Michael Shermer: A Review Essay of Michael Shermer's The Believing Brain," already published in this year's JISCA, is now on-line at his request. At the moment you can read it at Curry_on_Shermer.pdf

On Sunday afternoon and evening I watched the Coke 600 on TV from Charlotte. (As I may have mentioned before, we don't get the Indy 500 live on TV here in the Indianapolis area, though at least we get the Brickyard later on.) Anyway, it was a great race at Charlotte, and I was very pleased that Kasey Kahne won; he's among the number of NASCAR drivers I saw not all that long ago with the sprint cars and midgets at Anderson Speedway, just a few miles from here.

Monday I took off altogether, using the holiday as an excuse (that's how we OCD people think). I spent the entire day finishing the visual part of what will eventually be a video on the Chinese story of Madam Whitesnake. It's now ready for narration and then background music and sounds.

Because of having to stay so focused on the monotheism manuscript, I'm not able to go further at the moment with the series on quantum physics and relativity, but there are a couple of chips from the workshop to share with you.

Please remove the following items from your memory if they were ever in there: 1) That totem poles have anything directly to do with the societal organization called totemism. 2) That totem poles are genealogies (something that I thought for a long time). 3) That totem poles are idols. 4) That Freud had the least little clue about totemism when he wrote Totem and Taboo. 5) That a totem feast is a regular part of totemism. 6) That the ancient Hebrews ever had a totemic arrangement. 7) That there ever has been such a thing as a cannibalistic totem feast. 8) That totemism was a primarily religious institution. 9) That the origin of religion is to be found in totemism. 10) That Christian communion originated as a totem feast.

For more information on totem poles, watch my video:

 

Totemism is a way in which a lot of traditional societies are organized. It has the advantages of preventing inbreeding and equalizing food consumption. There are no universal rules; many societies never had totemism at all. Insofar as it may be fair to think in terms of a "typical" form of totemism, it might look like the summary below, but there are many other versions around.  Take the whole population (frequently called a "tribe") and divide it into two main groups, each one containing roughly half of the men and women. We can call these two main divisions moieties. 

Now underneath each of the moieties there are a number of subgroups; we can call them clans, phratries, or just plain totem groups. Each of these subgroups is in some way associated with an animal or a plant (or maybe some inanimate thing, but that gets to be "atypical"). They might consider themselves to be descended from the original totem being, but that idea has been totally overblown. Here's one arrangement, based on the Tlingits of Alaska, though I'm not going beyond their totemic arrangement here because the Tlingit have their own distinctive points and are not in my workshop right now.

Tlingit Nation
Moiety: Raven	Moiety: Eagle
Clan: Frog	Clan: Bear
Clan: Dog Salmon	Clan: Killer Whale
Clan: Land Otter	Clan: Shark
Clan: Owl	Clan: Dogfish
Clan: Halibut	Clan: Sea Monster
etc.

So, in "typical" totemism these are the two most fundamental rules:

1) You may neither kill nor eat your totem animal. (Though any number of totemic societies are not "typical" in this respect.)

2) You cannot marry anyone inside of your moiety, let alone your phratry. So, a Frog can marry a Bear or a Killer Whale, but not a Dog Salmon, and definitely not another Frog. We call this practice of marriage being mandatory outside of your clan and moiety "exogamy."

Also:

3) The offspring's clan and moiety is determined by the specific society's tradition. The two basic options are patrilineal (they belong to the clan and moiety of the father) or matrilineal (they follow the mother.) It would seem that in that respect the options are pretty limited.

In a previous post I mentioned the North Central Australian indigenous people called the Arrernte (Uranta, Aranda). They've been in several chapters of the manuscript by now. This time I needed to take a closer look at their totemic practices, and I found some really unique features; I mean, there's nowhere else on the globe where anyone has the same system as they do, and it provides "exceptions" to numerous aspects of the "typical" totemic arrangement. For example, we might just mention that the Arrernte do not have any food taboos concerning the totems, so a member of, say, the Lizard phratry may eat lizards, etc., a variation that is also found in other totemic societies around the world, but is pretty unusual in Australia.

Please note: In this entry I am making up names for the moeties and phratries. There are several reasons for doing so, particularly in a totally public blog like this, the main one being that I don't want to be seen as disrespecting the Arrernte by muddling up the actual names, some of which may be sacred to them. The best way to do so is by starting with fictional ones to begin with. I am using English translations of totemic names of other Australian groups, but not of the Arrernte. (I feel on firmer ground with other cultures.)

A moment ago, I mentioned that it seems as though we're out of options once we've said that the two ways in which to determine the totem of a child (specifically the phratry) are patrilineal or matrilineal descent. However, the Arrernte have found one that is neither. It is connected to their unusual belief that, even though sexual relations are a necessary prerequisite for the birth of a child, the infant is not really conceived until the spirit of the child has entered the mother’s womb, which happens at a later date. According to the Arrernte, children have been in existence ever since the creation of the world (in the Alcheringa or “dream time”), but have been in a state of preparation up until now. When they are ready, their pre-birth spirits are placed in significant areas of the wilderness and tied to especially marked stones. These places are known as the locations where the original totem beings had died after they had founded their phratries. The stones are called churinga nanja, and the marks on them confirm the totemic affiliation of the location. Consequently, a pre-born child already belongs to the totem of that area.

Let us say that an impending mother belongs to the Lizard phratry and that her husband, the father, is from the Kangaroo phratry, which are classified underneath the Eagle Hawk and Black Swan moieties respectively. We'll build a little table as we go along.

Arrernte of a Large Geographical Region
Moiety 1: Eagle Hawk	Moiety 2: Black Swan
Phratry: Lizard	Phratry: Kangaroo

Let us continue to suppose that, as this particular band pursues its annual trek through the bush, they have made camp for a short while in the location associated with the Cockatoo totem. Right about then, the pregnant woman feels the first movement of the child inside of her. This sensation indicates to the woman that the spirit of the child has entered her and is now going to spend several months in her womb prior to birth. When the child is born, even though coming from Lizard and Kangaroo parents, his or her totem will be the Cockatoo. That much is settled.

The first question I want to ask is to which moiety this child belongs. Is there an automatic assignment that places all Cockatoos into one or the other?

Arrernte of a Large Geographical Region
Moiety 1: Eagle Hawk	Moiety 2: Black Swan
Phratry: Lizard	Phratry: Kangaroo
Cockatoo ???

One might think (I know I would) that there would already be a rule in place that would automatically govern into which moiety all Cockatoos fall. But that is not the case. The child’s moiety will be that of the father. Since the father in our imagined scenario belongs to the Kangaroo phratry underneath the Black Swan moiety, the child will belong to the Cockatoo phratry underneath the same Black Swan moiety. So, there is patrilineal practice with regard to the moiety, though not with respect to the phratry.

Arrernte of a Large Geographical Region
Moiety 1: Eagle Hawk	Moiety 2: Black Swan
Phratry: Lizard	Phratry: Kangaroo
	Phratry: Cockatoo (in this case)

Now another question rears its head: Isn’t it just as likely that in due time another couple would camp in the same area and the woman became host to a child of the Cockatoo totem, but this time the affiliation of the parents would be reversed? In other words, this time she belonged to the Kangaroos of the Black Swan moiety, and he was a Lizard under the moiety of the Eagle Hawk. In that case, wouldn’t the child belong to the Cockatoo phratry, but be on the Eagle Hawk side of the moiety ledger this time? The answer is simply yes. In this situation, you can have the same phratry exist under both moieties.

Arrernte of a Large Geographical Region
Moiety 1: Eagle Hawk	Moiety 2: Black Swan
Phratry: Lizard	Phratry: Kangaroo
Phratry: Cockatoo (in this new case)	Phratry: Cockatoo (from the previous case)

In the manuscript, I've probably stated about a dozen times that we should avoid finding (or worse yet, making up) rules for societal structures as much as possible, a point that I am only now fully grasping myself. Nevertheless, this is bizarre insofar as it defies the "rules" that one usually just assumes. The bottom line is that all phratries can theoretically be found under both moieties.

The next obvious question is: What happens to exogamy in this strange case? It remains intact insofar as one may still only marry outside of one’s own moiety. Then, let us say that the two hypothetical children, both born as Cockatoos, eventually meet and want to get married. They are of the same phratry, but of different moieties, and the difference of moieties wins out. Incredibly, we have a case here where, in these circumstances, marriage is permitted within a phratry. Even though these two Cockatoos share the same phratry, they do not share moieties, and that is the decisive criterion. Black Swan Cockatoos and Eagle Hawk Cockatoos may get married. It’s the moiety that counts.

One more question: Now that you have two Cockatoos married to each other, what will the totem of their first offspring be? The answer is, of course, that we do not know; it depends on where the Cockatoo mother was when she first felt her child move. And, thus, there is the possibility that the third-generation child may also be a Cockatoo. And, then once more, this child’s moiety will depend on the father’s moiety. We would know if I had specified the sex of the two Cockatoo children in the example, but in the absence of that information, we can only say that, whatever moiety the new father belongs to will be the moiety of the child.

Somebody probably wants to know why this is significant. For one thing, if you're like me and just plain love to learn new stuff, it's interesting just for itself, and anything that's interesting just for itself is ipso facto significant. Isn't it amazing how complex people can make their cultic practices?! As I keep saying, rituals and mythologies build on themselves.

In terms of my over-all project, it is necessary to work on establishing a sequential chronology of preliterate cultures. So, where might one place the Arrernte in comparison to other cultures, who do not have this particular way of assigning totems? J. G. Frazer (he of the many editions of The Golden Bough) claimed that this was a good example of a very simple, undeveloped culture. After all, these people didn't even understand the biology of procreation correctly, and the way of designating totem groups by finding marked stones must have led up to what became the more conventional way of counting either patrilineal or matrilineal descent. So, if one wants to identify the least developed religion of humanity, one would have to look to the Arrernte as a good example. Thus, in this context it becomes extremely important, when looking at a culture with totally unique features, where it fits into the overall scheme of how cultures developed.

Frazer was not alone in his evaluation. Others, sharing his preconceptions agreed with him. However, speaking of "conceptions,"  concerning the idea that the Arrernte did not make a causal association of sexual relations as a necessary condition for pregnancy, Frazer et. al. were the ones who were a little naive. The Arrernte certainly knew what needed to be done in order for a child to enter the mother's womb at a later date. I don't know if there is a consensus--or what it would be worth if there was--but I think that at this time, insofar as anyone would be willing to raise the chronological question, the majority of scholars would agree that what we see in the Arrernte version of totemism is a late development that complicated earlier, simpler version of totemism. I like to think that common sense tells us that any form of totemism was preceded by a society without such divisions, but what I consider common sense does not count for much with a lot of people. So there needs to be evidence, and we need to have firm criteria which we apply to the evidence.

So, I keep plodding away, learning things I had never dreamed of learning and trying to keep myself in the twenty-first century when I'm not working on this project.

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