Rites and Rituals
Primogeniture, Purgatory, and the Needs of the Dead
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Paul Delany
Philosophers have debated whether it makes sense to say that the dead have rights. In a pragmatic view, the dead may have some control over posthumous events, in particular the disposal of their property. Medieval rules of inheritance required the transfer of landed estates to the eldest son, known as primogeniture. From the 13th century on, the new doctrine of Purgatory gave people an incentive to provide prayers and good works that would shorten their period of suffering after death. This had three important consequences: greatly increased wealth for the Catholic Church; the establishment of endowments to yield a perpetual income; and a rule of testamentary freedom that partially supplanted primogeniture.
Religion Does Not Stand Alone: The Common Origins of Religion, Science, and Philosophy
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ken A Baskin
Faced with the powerful forces that evoke awe and terror, in a world where life lives on death and both abundance and disaster are always possible, all human groups must learn to know and adapt to these forces. This paper will draw on findings in sciences ranging from neurobiology to paleoanthropology to examine how meeting the challenge of such forces would lead to religion, science, and philosophy, each of which explores these forces with a different habit of thought: With religion, people use myth and ritual; with science, they study the natural world; and with philosophy, they discuss the human dimensions of meeting these forces. In pre-literate societies, these three habits of mind are braided together in religion. As late as Babylonia, priests invented and practiced astronomy, and Ancient Egyptians expressed a sophisticated philosophy of justice embodied in the goddess Ma’at. By the Axial Age, however, as writing became a cultural tool, these three habits of mind began to diverge, especially in science and philosophy that would develop in Greece, India and China. This paper will conclude by discussing how Modernity has separated these habits of mind, but also examine how current sciences such as quantum physics are reintegrating them.
The Dievturi Movement in Latvia: Development of Doctrine and Ritual Practices
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Gatis Ozolins
The aim of this paper is to view the Dievturi movement in Latvia as a religious movement. The formation of Dievturi movement in the middle of the 1920s closely related with the endeavour to find a religious answer to the question about the place of ethnic Latvians in the newly created Latvian state, to reconstruct the traditional religion of ancient Latvians based on study of Latvian folk songs, folk beliefs and practices, and efforts to create an alternative religion to Christianity. After the official annexation of Latvia into the USSR in 1940 Dievturi movement was closed down. Legal activity of Dievturi was possible only in exile. The exiled Latvians, who wanted to find a way to retain their ethnic identity outside their ethnic home country, joined them. During the Soviet regime in Latvia, Dievturi were not part of an organised religious movement, its teaching and ritual practice were not further developed. The Dievturi movement in Latvia gradually resumed its activity at the end of the 1980s on the basis of the folklore movement, but it was officially registered as a religious organisation Dievturi Fellowship in 1990. The return of Dievturi from exile to Latvia was a significant impetus for the reconstruction of Dievturi movement. Members of the contemporary Dievturi movement emphasise that Dievturība is the renewal of the Latvian worldview contained in folk songs while religious practice is shaped on the basis of Latvian traditional lifestyle evidence, mainly ethnographic descriptions.
