Smells and Bells

     As the semester is coming to a close, I’m realizing how fast it seemed to go by. That’s why I’m glad I was able to take this course and really think about sensory experiences in a way I hadn’t before. I really enjoyed learning about each of the senses, the science and culture behind them, and their religious contexts. It’s pretty fascinating to see how different religions use the senses in a myriad of ways, and how distinct religious traditions value certain senses over others. When looking back at all my blog posts, I recognize that I wrote about each of the senses in slightly different ways, depending on how I felt when writing them. I remember feeling particularly connected to my first touch post and my post about sound and Anne Rasmussen’s book and I feel like that is when my voice and passion comes through in my writing the most.      After having participated in the banquet, I feel really grateful that we were able to hold the banquet in person a...

Credit: Health Matters, Stories of Science, Care & Wellness (NewYork-Presbyterian) David Abram’s Spell of the Sensuous reading made me think of how magic is portrayed in the media, like in movies, books, and TV shows, and how that is often different from the ideas and beliefs Abram talks about. One way he defines magic is:      “Magic, then, in its perhaps most primordial sense, is the experience of existing in a world made up of multiple intelligences, the intuition that every form one perceives…is an experiencing form, an entity with its own predilections and sensations, albeit sensations that are very different from our own” (16). I think that this definition differs from popular definitions of magic because it allows for the possibility of anyone experiencing magic and assumes that magic is natural and existing, rather than super -natural or brought on by special, impossible powers that only some people have. The concept of “multiple intelligences” and intuitions...

It’s interesting how although touch was, and still is sometimes, seen as a “female sense,” it is also used in a religious context to “provide an infusion of divine virtue” (130) and to be closer to God. Especially considering that Christianity has been a male-dominated religion, it seems contradictory that touch is seen as both feminine and an authentic way to connect with God, a practice that historically prioritizes men over women. This stood out to me as I was reading Constance Classen’s The Deepest Sense, most likely because of her focus on Medieval European culture and religion. Can only women engage in the connecting sense of touch? Certainly, this isn’t practically true, but in terms of a conceptual patriarchy, I think women and touch are associated in order to exaggerate a separation between them and the wholly different intellectual men. Again, the prioritizing of reason, sight, literacy are Western norms, and not necessarily the standard in other cultures and religions. ...

    In Religion in the Kitchen , Elizabeth Pérez discusses the practices and rituals of the Lucumí people, particularly their use of speaking and cooking in devotion to their gods (called orishas). In this Afro-Caribbean religion, each orisha has their own particular tastes and preferences when it comes to food offerings made by devotees. Use of the senses in these rituals is crucial; smell, touch, and sound specifically are significant in the process of preparing food. Pérez argues that the acts of feeding and speaking to the orishas makes them real. She draws upon her many years of “observant participation” in a Lucumí community to illustrate her points. Pérez discusses these rituals as “micropractices,” that is, “routine and intimate sequences of operations that can be broken down into more minute units of activity” (9). Essentially, these micropractices are small activities that aren’t always seen as religious or important because of their seemingly small scale. Image...

     One thing I found interesting in Diana Eck’s reading was the differences between Western monotheistic religions and Hinduism, specifically in their views of images in worship. In the West, the use of images is often seen as idolatry, that is, the worship of an object or something other than God as if it were God. As Dr. Dale Tuggy points out in his video lecture on Eck’s book, Western ideas and beliefs are often applied to Hindu devotion, claiming that the use of images, or idols, is wrong or bad. As mentioned in the video, the term idolatry is actually an outsider term, meaning that it has been used to describe Hindu practices from a Western viewpoint. I would argue that this goes against the concept of cultural relativism, the idea that a person's beliefs and practices should be understood based on that person's own culture, norms, and values From a comparative religious perspective, I think it’s important to keep cultural relativism in mind and try not to compare ...

     In the piece that we read from Rachel Fulton, “The Flavor of God in the Monastic West,” her discussion of people’s fear of using taste in learning about history was engaging to me, particularly because it seemed to echo the sentiments of other authors we’ve read, where they talked about the stereotypically “lower” senses of smell, taste, and touch. Taste is so personal and different from other senses because you have to be so physically close to whatever you’re tasting, i.e. putting it in your mouth. I also really liked how Fulton brought up the corporeal and spiritual divide and emphasized that it was more complex than a binary distinction between the body and the soul. Throughout the piece, she repeated this view and connected it with the importance of both taste and presentation of food in the Middle Ages. Clearly, these aspects of cooking/eating are still significant today, like in the coloring of food to make it seem more like its flavor (e.g. mint ice cream). T...

     One of the things that struck me while reading Women, The Recited Qur’an, and Islamic Music in Indonesia was just how diverse and varying Indonesian Qur’an recitation and music were in their forms. Anne Rasmussen discusses the many different contexts in which Qur’an recitations happen, including in children’s schools, at the college-level, in local and national competitions, and others. It’s so interesting how various musical traditions are distinct and yet interwoven as well; in chapter 5, Rasmussen notes the three main streams of Indonesian Islamic music as ones that have derived from Arabic traditions, Indigenous Indonesian music traditions, and the incorporation of contemporary Western music into the first two. Continuing with the theme of interconnectedness, I found it fitting that in Indonesian, Islamic music is called musik yang bernafaskan or “music that breathes or is scented with Islam” (153). Although this book is mainly about sound and music, the mixed ...

     In The Aroma of Righteousness, Deborah Green writes in depth about the associations of smells in rabbinic interpretations of the Hebrew Bible. One aspect I found particularly interesting was the concept that fragrance was and is used as an interpretive tool to communicate with God and show the love and sanctity between Israel and God. The interpretation part seemed key to me, especially since the experience and opinions of smells can be so polarizing. One person might love a particular smell and another might despise that same smell. I also really liked how Green mentions that part of the reason smell has been ignored in religious scholarship is because perfume and similar things are associated with women and femininity, and so, in our patriarchal society, “women’s issues” are often not talked about enough.      Another idea that we discussed in class was the possibility of multiple rabbinic interpretations being true at the same time. This seems very ...

     The sixth sense is controversial and hard to describe. I am intrigued by the idea that the sixth sense could have many possible meanings or could be multiple senses at once. After reading JBK’s post about whether or not speech and imagination are sixth senses, that got me thinking about both of those concepts. In my mind, it makes sense for speech and imagination to be sixth senses, at least in some ways. Speech is interesting to me because it involves hearing and touch (hearing oneself and feeling our mouths move as we speak), yet it is distinct from those two senses as well, particularly because speech involves creating output and with our traditional five senses, we tend to interpret sensory input. Imagination is a bit different because it seems like such an internal process, one where we individually use our brains, memories, and experiences to create something new. I see speech and imagination as being related, though, because they both create new, sensory outpu...

     Sound and hearing are interesting to me because I feel like I have a love/hate relationship with them. Some sounds, like my favorite music genres and nature sounds, I love and enjoy listening to. Other times, and with other sounds, I really dislike hearing them and/or feel overwhelmed by them. For me, sound is the sense that I most associate with the extremes of feeling incredibly understood/calmed by music and feeling uncomfortable/overwhelmed by sounds that are unpleasant (at least to me). I physically cringe when I think about nails scratching a chalkboard or the sensation of cotton squeaking between my fingers. Yet, I’ve always loved music. I played the cello all throughout school, loved performing in musicals, and still sing along to my favorite songs on car rides by myself. After reading Ackerman’s chapter on hearing, I still wonder: why are some sounds so joyous and others so detestable?      A particularly intense case of certain sounds causing...

     What Ackerman refers to as “a trial or a test,” taste is an incredibly social sense. Similar to touch, we have to be physically close to things to taste them. We use expressions like “breaking bread” and “earning our daily bread” in ways beyond the literal food meanings, that is, to share with others and make a living, respectively. Building off of our conversation from last class, I noticed in this section of the book, Ackerman almost immediately dives right in to the connection between food and sex. She explains, among other things, that many foods were considered aphrodisiacs because of their resemblance to various genitalia. Personally, I’m not sure I completely buy into Ackerman’s beliefs on how everything is related back to sex. Sure, I think some of what she says is true, but I also think she might be reaching a bit too far and confirming her own feelings of her sexuality. There are so many different experiences of food, sexuality, and asexuality that I would ...

     Ackerman’s chapter about touch was quite interesting to me. One part that intrigued me was at the beginning of the chapter, when she talks about the importance of touch in the health and development of premature babies. As someone who was born prematurely, this subject seemed relevant to me. It is clear from Ackerman’s description and the research she cites that touch is vital to the health of babies in helping foster emotional regulation, better sleeping, improved development, and more.      Another section that stood out to me was Ackerman’s discussion of warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals. As warm-blooded humans, we’re able to keep our body temperature higher than our surroundings, enabling us to travel to different climates and parts of the world fairly easily. On the other hand, cold-blooded animals, like reptiles and amphibians, rely on their environments to regulate their body temperature. Most of these creatures can’t migrate very far becau...

     Reading Ackerman’s chapter on smell was eye-opening (nose-opening?), as she described smell in ways I had never really thought of before. Smell is the most direct sense; when we smell something, it’s, as Ackerman puts it, “immediate and undiluted by language, thought, or translation.” Despite this, smell is also the most difficult to describe. We often describe it indirectly using other smells and senses for comparison. A few days before this class started, my mom and I were having a conversation about this very subject. I remember she had brought up the example of an orange and how it’s so hard to describe what an orange smells like unless you have smelled it before. You could say “fruity” or “citrusy,” but again, these are descriptors that rely on previous scent knowledge.     Another interesting aspect about smell that Ackerman brought up was that scents and “perfumes have obsessed every culture and religion.” Her chronicle of scents throughout time shed...