Totemism Sentence Examples

Robertson Smith, on the other hand, a new era was reached, in which the recently recognized existence of Totemism was made the basis of an attempt to give a 1 Scipione de Ricci, bishop of Pistoia from 1780 to 1791, on the ex-Jesuits requesting him to consecrate a bell dedicated to this object, issued a pastoral letter (3rd June 1784) in which he pointed out that the spirit of true religion was "far removed from fetichism," and warned his flock against "cardiolatry."

It has been held that animal sacrifice is the primitive form and that the decay of totemism or lack of domestic animals has brought about the substitution of a human victim; but it has also been urged that in many cases animal victims are treated like human beings and must consequently have replaced them, that human beings are smeared with the blood of sacrifice, and must therefore have themselves been sacrificed before a milder regime allowed an animal to replace them.

How far totemism, or belief in deified animal ancestors, existed in prehistoric Israel, as evidenced by the tribal names Simeon (hyena, wolf), Caleb (dog), IIamor (ass), Rahel (ewe) and Leah (wild cow), as well as by the laws respecting clean and unclean animals, is too intricate and speculative a problem to be discussed here.

In fact, while Robertson Smith (in Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, as well as his Religion of the Semites, followed by Stade and Benzinger) strongly advocated the view that clear traces of totemism can be found in early Israel, later writers, such as Marti, Gesch.

We are not concerned with the question whether the earliest forms of recorded religious consciousness such as animism, or totemism, or fetishism, were themselves degradations of a primitive revelation or not.

The Dene (Tinneh) myths resembled those of the Eskimo, and all the hunting tribes of eastern Canada and United States and the Mississippi valley have a mythology based upon their zootechny and their totemism.

The natural causes of famine are still mainly outside our control, though science enables agriculturists to combat them more successfully, and the improvement in means of transport allows a rich harvest in one land to supplement the defective Breaking up of totemism.

A further extension is given by some writers, who use the term as synonymous with the religions of primitive peoples, including under it not only the worship of inanimate objects, such as the sun, moon or stars, but even such phases of primitive philosophy as totemism.

Primitive religions are like so many similar beads on a string; and the concern of the student of comparative religion is at this stage mainly with the nature of the string, to wit, the common conditions of soul and society that make, say, totemism, or taboo, very much the same thing all the savage world over, when we seek to penetrate to its essence.

These tend to show that Artemis was first and foremost a nature goddess, whose cult shows numerous traces of totemism.

But the chief evidence for the savage theory of man's close kinship with the lower animals is found in the institution called totemism - the belief that certain stocks of men in the various tribes are descended by blood descent from, or are developed out of, or otherwise connected with, certain objects animate or inanimate, but especially with beasts.

So far the identity of custom with savage totemism is absolute.

Of all the explanations, then, of Egyptian animal-worship, that which regards the practice as a survival of totemism and of savagery seems the most satisfactory.

Beasts also appeared in the royal genealogies, as if the early Egyptians had filled up the measure of totemism by regarding themselves as actually descended from animals.

But we apply no such explanation to similar savage legends, and our theory is that the Osirian myth is only one of these retained to the time of Plutarch by the religious conservatism of a__race which, to the time of Plutarch, preserved in full vigour most of the practices of totemism.

How far totemism, or belief in deified animal ancestors, existed in prehistoric Israel, as evidenced by the tribal names Simeon (hyena, wolf), Caleb (dog), IIamor (ass), Rahel (ewe) and Leah (wild cow), &c., 6 as well as by the laws respecting clean and unclean animals, is too intricate and speculative a problem to be discussed here.

The animal guardian reappears in the nagual of Central America (see article Totemism), the yunbeai of some Australian tribes, the manitou of the Red Indian and the bush soul of some West African tribes; among the latter the link between animal and human being is said to be established by the ceremony of the blood bond.

With the decline of totemism arose the need for human sacrifice - the only means of re-establishing the broken tie of kinship when the animal species was no longer akin to man.