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FROM SACRED AND PROFANE
TO SECULAR
Training Handout
The number of gods is diminishing
If we look at the broad sweep of human history,
and if we look at the range of societies from simple to complex, there
are a few trends we can identify.
On the left side of the diagram of the six
dimensions
we see that most if not all time and space is divided into two categories,
sacred and profane.
As we move along to the right in that diagram,
we see increasing amounts of space and time that are secular, ie neither
profane nor sacred.
As with change in other dimensions,
belief
change tends to be cumulative (adding new to old) rather than revolutionary
(total replacement of old for new).
That, in turn, contributes to another generality,
that social and cultural changes tend to be in the direction of simpler
to more complex.
Although modern Christianity does not include
the idea of reincarnation or life after death (until the coming again of
Christ), many people continue to claim to be in touch with their dead relatives,
and many psychics claim to be able to talk to ghosts.
Many Hollywood movies, our modern myths,
build on the idea of dead people being able to communicate with live ones,
and these modern myths (movies) reveal an underlying belief in the existence
of ancestors and ghosts in western society.
The word “Easter” which is related to
the words “oestrous” and “oyster,” is an Eastern European Springtime
fertility custom.
Eggs have been used around the world in many
cultures in fertility customs. When an
Akan
girl has her first menstrual flow, for example, her mother gives her an
egg
(forbidden to be eaten by children).
Today we tend to associate Christmas trees
with the Christian celebration of the birth of Christ, and to associate
Easter eggs with the Christian celebration of the rising of Christ from
being dead.
Bringing an evergreen tree into the house
for winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, December 21, and putting
candles on it (to encourage the return of the sun), and putting fruits
on it (to make the earth fertile again) is a pre Christian Northern European
annual rebirth custom.
Martin Luther is reputed to have brought
it into Christian practices, but he did not invent the custom.
Unlike deciduous trees, the evergreens
were used because they remained “alive” (green) through the
winter.
See my essay on the forty two day
cycle created by the fusing of the Semitic seven day week with an earlier
West African six day week. “Forty
Days; The Akan Calendar.” Africa: Journal of the International African
Institute, Volume 48, Number 1 January 1978, pp 80-4,
reproduced on my web site.
In Akan pre Christian religion, every
person (and every god) remembered, was named after and celebrated his or
her weekday of birth as a personal Sabbath.
Onyame, the Supreme God, was said
to be born on Saturday. Kwame Nkrumah, first president of Ghana,
changed his name from Kofi Nwieh to Kwame, after doing some research and
discovering that many historical leaders, including Hitler, Napoleon and
Alexander, were born on Saturday, the day of power.
Since children are named according
to their weekday, and since they do not
record year of birth, children are told to put their right hand over the
top of the head to touch their left ear. If they cannot, they are
too young to start school, and if they can they are deemed old enough to
attend school.
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