totemism

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The totem poles are typical of the north-west coast culture of North America: three-dimensional representations of the clan totems with political, social and mythological meanings

Totemism is an ethnological (sometimes also religious-scientific ) umbrella term for various social concepts or beliefs in which people have a mythical-kinship connection to certain natural phenomena (animals, plants, mountains, sources, etc.) - the so-called totems - to which an important symbol is Is important for finding one's identity .

The term “totem” stands for the symbol either in the sense of a profane metaphorical name or group badge - or a sacred symbol. As a result, a distinction is made between social and religious aspects in totemism . The meaning of the totems is very different from culture to culture: For many Aborigines it is (or was) power- bearing spiritual badges that people with the environment and the dream timeconnect and which are associated with sacred places, times, symbols or actions. For many ethnic groups from other continents, totems are explained magically and mythologically, but in everyday life they are often “only” profane names for classifying and recognizing social groups based on the natural order and for maintaining cosmic-kinship relationships. From a psychological point of view, a totem is clearly “more effective and in-depth” in any form than any modern identification mark. The assignment and / or connection “religious or social” is, however, a frequent subject of controversy among ethnologists, since a sharp distinction is usually not possible.

In almost all totemic ideas, two basic prohibitions are linked:

  • The "related" natural objects may not be killed, damaged or eaten (in times of great need, however, totem animals may only be killed by people belonging to this totem for some ethnic groups ).
  • Sexual relationships within a totem clan are strictly taboo .

Every totemic conception expands the concept of kinship to natural contexts in order to integrate the foreign and threatening into the human world.

This “relationship” is not seen in a biological but in a purely mythological sense; However, interpreted very differently depending on the ethnic group: Some Australian Aborigines and the South African Khoisan see in the totem, for example, a direct common ancestry, while in Central African tribes only a distant family relationship is assumed.

Totemic ideas have been described around the world, especially among those indigenous peoples who are divided into different ethnic groups ( lineages ) or clans.

Due to the scientific ambiguity in religiously motivated ideas, which mostly affect the individual, many modern ethnologists only consider totemism in its collective form, in which the totem is a symbol of the togetherness of social groups (group totemism ). The totem here represents certain desirable - often humanized - properties or behaviors of animals, plants or other natural objects that are adopted in this way in the cultural behavior repertoire. Often is difficult to tell if a totem to chosen to match the existing characteristics of the group; or whether these peculiarities only developed in the course of time through the choice of the totem and the belief in the mythical relationship.

Totemic ideas still occur today, especially in central and southern Africa, in some traditional societies , in some Australian and Melanesian tribes and in non- Christianized indigenous people in Central and South America who live close to nature .

Etymology and original idea

Pictograms of the Anishinabe, from which the term “totem” originates

The incorrect interpretation of the terms ototeman ( Ojibwe language : siblings by blood) and nintotem (family badges based on animal names) of the five clans of the Anishinabe Indians of Southeast Canada, combined with the idea of personal guardian spirits in early ethnology, led to the idea that it was a totem is always about a spiritual spirit being in the form of an animal, a plant or a mineral. This falsified notion was soon arbitrarily transferred to similar phenomena in other peoples in a cultural comparison . In ethnology of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this gave rise to the idea of ​​a globally widespread totemism as a "universal primordial religion" (→ also: animistic theory of religion ). To this extent, the concept of totemism is now considered obsolete.

Types of totemism

Artificial cult mounds ( mounds ) in bear form ( Effigy Mounds National Monument , Iowa). A totemic connection is obvious.

Totemic ideas differ considerably from culture to culture and, according to modern understanding, are not a universal religious or social phenomenon of early human development. This is clearly expressed in the many problems of clearly defining, delimiting and subdividing totemism: it is primarily an artificial, scientific construct.

A common distinction is made between individual, gender and group totemism, depending on whether an individual, a gender group or a whole clan is related to the totem. The latter form is by far the most common.

Even this distinction is not always easy. Examples of ethnic groups with collective and individual totemism can be found in North America, Australia and Africa .

As already described, it is difficult to distinguish between religious and social significance: in Polynesia or among the Yanomami there is almost no social aspect, in Africa there are social and religious functions, and in North America the focus is almost everywhere on social significance.

Some authors emphasize that the concept of the spiritual guardian spirit must not be viewed in isolation from clan totemism: the one and the other are rooted in mythology and any conceptual separation is artificial.

Individual totemism

Tjuringa - Aboriginal pegs with a painted totem

Personal totemism is largely religiously motivated, even if this is only undisputed in the case of a few ethnic groups: it is usually the idea of ​​a personal protective spirit in the form of an animal. A classic example from Australia are the Arrernte: According to their belief, one receives one's totem from the Tjuringas of the holy place where the mother passed shortly before she became pregnant. In this case, a Tjuringa is a stone object of an ancestor in which his soul has manifested itself. For many North American prairie Indians , the personal animal spirit appeared in the search for a vision ( rite of passage ).

“ Alter ego double souls ” in the form of a concrete animal (less often a plant), however - as with the Yanomami or the peoples of Mesoamerica (→ Nagual ) - many authors do not treat them as totemic phenomena, but place them in shamanistic or animistic contexts. Alter ego ideas are only counted among the totemic concepts if at the same time a direct descent from a common ancestor is assumed and corresponding taboos exist for sexual contact with people of the same totem. In the case of the African kpelle, for example, the alter ego punishes its owner as soon as he violates one of the totem prohibitions.

Totemic clans

Passport of the Iroquois with the nine totemic clan symbols of the tribe

Profanely motivated group totems serve to classify and recognize social groups based on the natural order and to strengthen cosmic-family relationships. For example with the Maya ethnic groups in the highlands of Chiapas, where to this day each group of descent bears the name of an animal, a plant or a natural object. The clan members are not allowed to marry each other and live separately from other clans. The clan name symbolizes the common ancestor, of whom there is usually no concrete memory.

Totemistic clans are:

  • Biologically closer or more distant people or people who consider themselves to be related by blood,
  • who use a natural object as a common identity symbol that metaphorically represents the individual characteristics of the group,
  • whose clantotem is an emotional symbol for often rigorous rules of conduct and rules
  • whose totem and common ancestry are mythologically linked to prehistoric times and ancestors
  • and who often do not live separately, but among members of other clans.

A person always has a clan totem from birth. Depending on whether the relationship is patrilineal or matrilineal , the totem is inherited from the paternal or maternal line. In Central Africa, however, it also happens with matrilineal clans that the totem is taken from the Matriklan, but the more important totem comes from the Patriklan.

As a rule, no group member is allowed to have sexual relations with a member of the same totem, regardless of whether the two are actually related. This copulation rule, known as exogamy , results from the fact that the totem membership was originally - before the connection between copulation and pregnancy was discovered - only 'inherited' from the mother to her children, so that, with such a matrilineal clan membership, the sexual relationship between the 'Father' and the mother's daughters are expressly not subject to any taboo. The incest taboo in today's understanding of the term presupposes the knowledge of paternity and the introduction of a patrilineal succession made possible by this.

The collective religious veneration of a certain totem animal, which goes beyond the mere badge, is described for ancient Egypt , New Zealand and Africa.

Development of totemism

“Dancing shaman” in deer shape: cave painting in the Three Brothers Cave in France

The close human-totem relationship is ancient and could be related to early political alliances in which a distribution of the sources of life (including women as the source of descendants) was agreed; this would explain certain prohibitions and rules of exchanging women (see Claude Lévi-Strauss ). In any case, totem ideas are an important element of the

Totemism is primarily anchored in animistic hunter-gatherer cultures , which, as expected, have a strong bond with animals. These hunter cultures are increasingly being pushed back, so that the importance of totemism is diminishing. The colonialism and Christian missionaries have a dramatic in the past cultural change initiated. Totemic ideas still occur today, especially in central and southern Africa, among some traditional societies , among some Australian and Melanesian tribes and among (as yet) non- Christianized indigenous peoples of Central and South America who live close to nature .

Research history

Totemism and religion

See also: Dead ends in ethnological research on religion

Human or shaman connected with his animal spirit (coyote), perhaps riding a snake. ( Petroglyph , Petrified Forest , Arizona, USA)

John Ferguson McLennan was the first to associate totemism with religion in 1869 . He saw it as a remnant of fetishism . William Robertson Smith went even further and saw the origin of religion in totemism. Almost all authors of the 19th century adopted this doctrine or at least considered totemism to be the earliest known form of religion. All of these theories are based on evolutionism or have evolved from it through critical analysis.

Smith (and later Sigmund Freud , who, however, saw no religious background) attributed the sacrifice to totemism. The totem is strictly taboo, but is slaughtered on special occasions and eaten together. F. B. Jevons suspected a linear development from totemism to religion in 1896. Animism is more of a primitive philosophy than a form of religious belief.

The League of psychologist Wilhelm Wundt wrote in 1912, "it follows a high probability of the conclusion that the totemic culture has been formed throughout a precursor of later developments and a transitional stage between the state of primitive man and the heroes and gods Age" .

Since it is extremely rare for the totem animal to be killed and eaten, the sacrifice theory of Freud and Smith lacks its most important foundation. Totemism is widespread throughout the world, but numerous wild-predatory "ancient peoples" (e.g. pygmies, paleosiberian ethnic groups) do not know totemism. Therefore, Wundt's thesis that totemism is a general transition stage is not valid.

Emile Durkheim

Émile Durkheim elevated totemism to the primal religion

Émile Durkheim did extensive research into the totemism of the Australian Arrernte and adopted four basic ideas from Smith:

  1. that primitive religion is a clan cult,
  2. that this clan cult was totemistic (he believed that totemism and the clan system were automatically mutually dependent),
  3. that the god of the clan is the spiritualized clan itself and
  4. that totemism is the most elementary and in this sense the most original form of religion known to us.

He saw religion as a unified system of beliefs and practices related to sacred things, i.e. H. on isolated and forbidden things. According to this criterion, totemism can be defined as a religion. Now which object is worshiped in totemic religion? In Durkheim's view, it is society itself that people revere. The totem is at the same time a symbol for God or the principle of life as it is for society, because God and society are the same. In the totem symbols, the clan members express their identity and group membership.

Socio-cultural interpretations

James George Frazer took the opposite point of view in 1910 in Totem and Exogamy : "Pure totemism is by no means a religion in itself, because the totems are not worshiped, they are in no sense deities." Therefore, we should only refrain from worshiping totems speak. WH Rivers saw in it a combination of elements of social bond, psychological and ritual nature. Radcliffe-Brown emphasized in 1929 that totemic categorization principles are reminiscent of modern scientific classifications.

Claude Lévi-Strauss

The ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss had a decisive influence on totemic theories

Claude Lévi-Strauss based his considerations on the interpretation of the ancient philologist Andrew Lang , who as early as 1911 described the first report on totemism - which the fur trader John Long had brought with him from the Anishinabe Indians in 1791 - as a wrong translation and confusion. Lévi-Strauss therefore assumed that only the clan animal name system of the tribe can be described as totemism, but not the individual guardian spirits in animal form. He placed the latter separately from the religious "Manitu system" - as he called it. Lévi-Strauss expanded the mythological-social explanation in 1962 and recognized in the mythical thinking of totemism the universal human ability to create natural and socio-cultural patterns of order. Lévi-Strauss is considered the fiercest critic of the idea of ​​religious totemism and his extensive critical writings are still of great importance.

Mediating theories

Some ethnologists today criticize the purely socio-cultural approaches that are based on Lévi-Strauss' theory: The assumed mixture of the protective spirit idea and clan symbol is only formal and linguistic and the separation is therefore artificial. In fact, there is undoubtedly a connection between the two ideas, because such elementary ideological ideas are always part of a mythically anchored cosmology , which often "interweaves" social and religious aspects.

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Gerhard Kubik: Totemism: ethnopsychological research materials and interpretations from East and Central Africa 1962–2002. (= Studies on ethnopsychology and ethnopsychoanalysis. Volume 2). LIT Verlag, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-8258-6023-X , pp. 4–9.
  2. ↑ Ditmar Brock: Life in Societies: From the origins to the ancient high cultures. 1st edition. Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 3-531-14927-X , p. 187.
  3. ^ A b c d e f g Walter Hirschberg (founder), Wolfgang Müller (editor): Dictionary of Ethnology. New edition, 2nd edition. Reimer, Berlin 2005, pp. 377-378.
  4. ^ Horst Südkamp: Cultural-historical studies. P. 33ff.
  5. ^ Horst Südkamp: Cultural-historical studies. P. 172.
  6. ^ Claude Lévi-Strauss: La pensée sauvage. 1962, German edition: The wild thinking. Translation by Hans Naumann. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1968.
  7. ↑ Thomas Schweer: Keyword natural religions. Heyne, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-453-08181-1 , p. 22.
  8. ↑ Markus Porsche-Ludwig, Jürgen Bellers (ed.): Handbook of the religions of the world. Volumes 1 and 2, Traugott Bautz, Nordhausen 2012, ISBN 978-3-88309-727-5 , p. 917.
  9. ↑ a b Josef F. Thiel: Totem / Totemism. In: Horst Balz, James K. Cameron, Stuart G. Hall, Brian L. Hebblethwaite, Wolfgang Janke, Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, Joachim Mehlhausen, Knut Schäferdiek, Henning Schröer, Gottfried Seebaß, Hermann Spieckermann, Günter Stemberger, Konrad Stock (eds .): Theological Real Encyclopedia , Volume 33: Technology - Transcendence . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2002, ISBN 3-11-019098-2 , pp. 683-686.
  10. ^ A b c Marvin Harris: Cultural Anthropology - A Textbook. From the American by Sylvia M. Schomburg-Scherff. Campus, Frankfurt / New York 1989, ISBN 3-593-33976-5 , pp. 292-293.
  11. ↑ a b c Dieter Haller u. Bernd Rodekohr: dtv-Atlas Ethnology. 2nd completely revised and corrected edition. 2010, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-423-03259-6 , p. 235.
  12. ↑ Birgit Recki (ed.) Ernst Cassirer (author): Philosophy of symbolic forms: Second part: The mythical thinking. Volume 2, Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-7873-1954-1 , p. 218.
  13. ^ A b Waldemar Stöhr: Lexicon of peoples and cultures. Westermann, Braunschweig 1972, ISBN 3-499-16160-5 , p. 116.
  14. ^ Horst Südkamp: Cultural-historical studies. P. 168.
  15. ^ Horst Südkamp: Cultural-historical studies. Pp. 172-173.
  16. ↑ Horst Südkamp: Cultural and Historical Studies: Totemism: Institution or Illusion? . In: Yumpu.com, online PDF document, accessed January 23, 2015, pp. 39–43.
  17. ↑ Karl R. Wernhart: Ethnic Religions - Universal Elements of the Religious. Topos, Kevelaer 2004, ISBN 3-7867-8545-7 , p. 102.
  18. ↑ Wolfgang Lindig: Secret societies and men's societies of the prairie and woodland Indians of North America: examined using the example of the Omaha and Iroquois. (= Studies in Cultural Studies. Volume 23). F. Steiner, Wiesbaden 1970, ISBN 3-515-00857-8 , p. 36.
  19. ↑ Alcida Rita Ramos: Indigenism: Ethnic Politics in Brazil. University of Wisconsin Press, 1998, p. 192.
  20. ↑ Claudia Müller-Ebeling u. Christian Rätsch: Shaman's animals: power animals, totems and animal allies. Edition, AT Verlag, Aarau u. Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-03800-524-7 , p. 61.
  21. ^ Horst Südkamp: Cultural-historical studies. P. 162.
  22. ↑ Wolfgang Lindig et al. Mark Münzel (Ed.): The Indians. Volume 2: Mark Münzel: Central and South America. 3rd revised and expanded edition. the 1st edition from 1978, dtv, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-423-04435-7 , pp. 39-40.
  23. ^ Horst Südkamp: Cultural-historical studies. P. 11.
  24. ↑ Herman Westerink (Ed.): Totem and Tabu. (= Sigmund Freud's works. Volume 1). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8470-0021-1 , p. 144.
  25. ↑ Georg W. Oesterdiekhoff (Ed.): Lexicon of sociological works. 2nd Edition. Springer-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2014, ISBN 978-3-658-02377-5 , p. 172.
  26. ^ Horst Südkamp: Cultural-historical studies. P. 41.
  27. ^ Horst Südkamp: Cultural-historical studies. P. 43.
  28. ^ Horst Südkamp: Cultural-historical studies. Pp. 39-41.