Smells and Bells

In class, we've discussed how many religious rituals usually involve some medium of music. The presence of music in these events helps to bind these communities and bring them closer together. I think that the Wheatones, an all female acapella group on campus that I am a member of, is involved in rituals that bind groups of people together. In as itself, the Wheatones meet in the same room, around the same time, four days out of the week. The purpose of the group is to create music arrangements and perform them using only voices, compared to instruments. We then learn the music through repetition and critiquing, and are usually offered to perform at events such as Relay for Life, nursing homes, children's museums of science, etc. When we are asked to perform it is usually to set the atmosphere for an event, or to unite the attendants of the event in one anthem. In this moment, everyone listens to the same tune in solidarity and potentially shares some of the same thoughts.

Muslim people engaged in Qur’an recitation in Indonesia would never describe what they are doing as music. Islam has a complicated relationship with music, and even beyond that the Indonesian definition of music require instruments. However, Anna Rasmussen claims that the recitation she is studying is a form of music. We discussed this in class, which made me wonder at what point chanting becomes music. I think the answer lies in the concept of the “festivalization of religion” that Rasmussen brings up in chapter four. There is a fine line between ritual and art. First, I do not believe that most people would describe their own rituals as a form of art. The application of that label requires an outsider’s perspective in many cases. Second, the Indonesian government encourages the performance of religion in a way that transforms ritual into art. This may be how Qur’an recitation can become music. When recitation becomes a public event and a competition, the intention behind it is tran

In this class we have talked a lot about each of the five senses and how they have affected human history and especially human ritual, and the role they can play in symbolizing and communing with the divine. We've talked about how each of our senses work and how the data they give us allow us to perceive and interact with the world at large. How important each of our senses can be on establishing us within a community, whether we are touching our friends or eating with them. And how they can keep us alive, often in ways we don't even realize, such as bitter's function as a poison detector or the fact that a lack of touch can communicate to a baby's system that it lacks protection and that it should conserve its resources and stop growing. Our senses can do some amazing things, and are at the root of sentience. Supposedly the brain originally developed to allow the processing of smell! But our perceptions are built of more than any one of our senses -- they are a

Religion in itself is a set of guidelines for proper behavior within society, family and friends and even in our most intimate relationships.   Religion, regardless of which one, provides us with stories and reasoning to follow specific guidelines and the consequences that will ensue from not following these guidelines.   Religion also provides the answers to the most difficult questions that cannot be satisfactorily answered by science and it gives its followers the feeling of belonging and reason to exit. What Happens When, like religion, carried a message of guidelines involving our behavior towards sexual encounters and activity occurring on this college campus. Like religion, it provided a story with a narrative that we could all relate to and apply to our own behavior and experiences. And, like religion it explained the consequences that result from behavior that does not follow the specific guidelines for sexual activity without consent.             What Happens When an

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This morning I woke up and I realized I needed to meditate before one of my exams. That was when I first began to reflect on how sensitive I had truly been for the past week. JBK asked the class when a ritual truly begins. In my Wiccan readings I have come across the fact that a ritual starts to gain existence and energy even before the event, it beings with the first thought. Throughout my day I become very introspective as I caught myself thinking “I’m tired and I’m sad.” I realized that I barely left my room this weekend and I had even cried for a few hours. on further inspection I also hadn’t been eating right. To me this signals a need for a cleansing ritual. Thus my ritual had begun. I took a short nap, showered, and went outside to see the moon ( a symbol of my mother goddess). I needed to cleanse myself through burning sage. I closed my eye gently and envisioned the smoke entering my body, collecting dark energy. On the exhale I envisioned the dark smoke leaving my body are ca