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The anthropologist has turn out to be so familiar with the assortment of ways in which unlike peoples behaves in like condition that he is not appropriate to be amazed by even the most foreign customs. In fact, if all of the reasonably possible amalgamation of behavior have not been established somewhere in the world, he is appropriate to believe that they ought to be present in some yet undescribed ethnic group. This point has, in fact, been spoken with esteem to clan organization by Murdock (1949:71). In this light, the mysterious beliefs and carry out of the Nacirema present such extraordinary aspects that it appears desirable to illustrate them as an example of the limits to which human conduct can go.
Professor Linton first brought the rite of the Nacirema to the concentration of anthropologists twenty years ago (1936:326), but the ethnicity of this people is still very badly understood. They are a North American group living in the terrain between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles. Little is recognized of their source, although ritual states that they loom from the east. According to Nacirema mythology, their nation was initiated by a culture hero, Notgnihsaw, who is otherwise famous for two immense feats of vigor the throwing of a piece of wampum transversely the river Pa-To-Mac and the slicing down of a cherry tree in which the courage of Truth inhabited.
Nacirema culture is portrayed by a highly urbanized market financial system which has developed in a rich natural territory. Whereas much of the people’s time is dedicated to economic recreation, a large part of the fruits of these efforts and a substantial portion of the day are exhausted in ritual actions. The center of this action is the human body, the manifestation and health of which appear as a leading concern in the culture of the people. While such anxiety is certainly not strange, its ceremonial features and connected philosophy are exclusive.
The essential conviction underlying the whole scheme appears to be that the human body is unattractive and that its ordinary tendency is to weakness and disease. Confined in such a body, man’s only hope is to turn away these characteristics through the employ of the powerful influences of rite and ceremony. Every family has one or more place of worship devoted to this function. The more influential individuals in the society have numerous shrines in their houses and, in fact, the wealth of a house is frequently referred to in terms of the number of such rite centers it possesses. Most houses are of wattle and daub construction, but the place of worship rooms of the rich are walled with stone. Inferior families mimic the rich by applying pottery sign to their shrine walls.
Reproduced by permission of the American Anthropological Association from the American Anthropologist, vol. 58, June 1956. Not for further sale or reproduction.
While every family has at least one shrine, the rite associated with it is not family rite but are private and hidden. The rites are typically only talk concerning with children, and then only throughout the period when they are being commence into these ambiguity. I was able, however, to set up sufficient relationship with the society to scrutinize these shrines and to have the ceremony described to me.
The focal point of the place of worship is a box or chest, which is built into the wall. In this chest are kept the many jewelry and supernatural potions without which any resident consider he could live.
These preparations are protected from a diversity of particular practitioners. The most influential of these are the medication men, whose support must be satisfied with considerable gifts. However, the medication men do not offer the healing potions for their clients, but decide what the components should be and then write them down in an ancient and underground language. This writing is understood only by the medicine men and by the herbalists who, for another gift, supply the necessary fascination.
The attraction is not inclined of after it has provided its purpose, but is located in the charm-box of the family shrine. As these magical materials are specific for certain ills, and the real or imagined maladies of the people are many, the charm-box is usually full to abundant. The supernatural packets are so numerous that the people forget what their basis were and fear to use them again. While the populaces are very indistinct on this point, we can only take for granted that the idea in keep all the old supernatural materials is that their presence in the charm-box, before which the body rites are conducted, will in some way defend the worshipper.
Beneath the charm-box is a small font. Every day every member of the family, in series, penetrates the shrine room, bend over his head before the charm-box, mingles different sorts of holy waters in the font, and proceeds with a brief ritual of ablution. The holy waters are protected from the Water Temple of the community, where the priest’s behavior elaborates ceremonies to make the liquid ritually pure.
In the ladder of magical practitioners, and below the medicine men in prestige, are specialists whose designation is best translated holy-mouth-men. The Nacirema have an almost pathological horror of and appeal with the mouth, the situation of which is believed to have a supernatural influence on all social relationships. Were it not for the rites of the mouth, they believe that their teeth would fall out, their gums bleed, their jaws shrink, their friends waste them, and their lovers reject them. They also believe that a muscular connection exists between oral and moral characteristics. For example, there is a ritual ablution of the mouth for children which are hypothetical to improve their moral fiber.
The daily body ritual carry out by everyone comprise a mouth-rite. Despite the fact that these people are so scrupulous about care of the mouth, this ritual involves a practice which hits the unskilled stranger as disgusting. It was account to me that the rites consists of include a magic bundle of hog hairs into the mouth, along with certain magical powder, and then affecting the bundle in an extremely dignified series of signals.
In addition to the private mouth-rite, the people look for out the holy-mouth-man once or twice a year. These practitioners have an inspiring set of paraphernalia, consisting of a selection of augers, awls, probes, and prods. The use of these objects in the exorcism of the evils of the mouth engages almost incredible ritual torture of the customer.
The holy-mouth-man opens the customer’s mouth and, using the exceeding mentioned utensils, enlarges any holes, which may have been created in the teeth. Supernatural materials are put into these holes. If there are no sensibly occurring holes in the teeth, large section of one or more teeth are gouged out so that the supernatural substance can be functional. In the client’s view, the purpose of the ministrations is to capture decay and to draw friends. The tremendously sacred and traditional character of the rite is manifested in the fact that the natives return to the holy-mouth-man, despite the fact that their teeth continue to decompose.
It is to be expected that, when a detailed study of the Nacirema is made, there will be cautious inquiry into the character structure of these people. One has but to gaze at the sparkle in the eye of a holy-mouth-man, as he jabs an awl into an uncovered nerve, to guess that a certain amount of aggression is involved. If this can be recognized, a very interesting pattern emerges, for most of the population shows definite masochistic tendencies. It was to these that Professor Linton referred in discussing a distinctive part of the daily body ritual which was carried out only by men. This part of the rite occupies scraping and lacerating the surface of the face with a sharp gadget. Special women’s rites are performed only four times throughout each lunar month, but what they lack in occurrence is made up for in barbarity. As part of this ceremony, women bake their heads in small ovens for about an hour. The hypothetically motivating point is that what seems to be a preponderantly masochistic people have urbanized sadistic professional.
The medicine men have an impressive temple, or latipso, in each community of any dimension. The more complicated ceremonies necessary to treat very sick patients can only be carried out at this holy place. These ceremonies engage not only the thaumaturge but an enduring group of vestal maidens who move calmly regarding the temple assembly room in typical costume and crown.
The latipso rituals are so cruel that it is extraordinary that a fair amount of the really sick citizens who enter the holy place ever get well. Small children whose instruction is still incomplete have been known to oppose efforts to take them to the holy place because that is where you go to depart this life. Despite this fact, sick adults are not only excited but eager to experience the protracted ritual cleansing, if they can afford to do so. No matter how unwell the petitioner or how grave the urgent situation, the protectors of many temples will not declare a client if he cannot offer a rich gift to the protector. Even after one has increased admission and endured the rituals, the guards will not authorize the neophyte to depart until he creates still another gift.
The supplicant incoming the temple is first naked of all his or her clothes. In daily life the Nacirema avoids publicity of his body and its normal functions. Bathing and excretory acts are presents only in the confidentiality of the household shrine, where they are ritualized as part of the body-rites. Mental shock outcome from the truth that body privacy is abruptly lost upon admission into the latipso. This species of ceremonial action is demanded by the fact that the excreta are used by a spiritualist to determine the course and scenery of the client’s illness. Female clients, on the other hand, find their unclothed bodies are subjected to the analysis, manipulation, and stimulate of the medication men.
Few supplicants in the holy place are well sufficient to do anything but lie on their firm beds. The daily rituals, like the rites of the holy-mouth-men, engage discomfort and torment. With ritual accuracy, the vestals arouses their miserable charges every dawn and roll them regarding on their beds of aches while performing ablutions, in the official movements of which the maidens are highly skilled. At other times they insert the supernatural wands in the supplicant’s mouth or force him to eat substances which are supposed to be healing. From time to time the medications men come to their clients and jab magically treat needles into their flesh. The fact that these ceremonies may not heal, and may even kill the neophyte, no way reduces the people’s trust in the medication men.
There residue one other kind of practitioner, known as a listener. This witch-doctor has the power to work out the devils that cottage in the heads of people who have been bewitched. The Nacirema consider that parents bewitched their own offspring. Mothers are mainly suspected of laying a curse on children while coaching them the secret body ceremonies. The counter-magic of the witch-doctor is strange in its lack of rites. The patient merely tells the listener all his dilemmas and fears, beginning with the initial difficulties he can bear in mind. The memory exhibited by the Nacirema in these exorcism meetings is truly amazing. It is not uncommon for the patient to complain about the rejection he felt ahead being weaned as an infant, and a few persons even see their dilemmas going back to the shocking effects of their own birth.
In conclusion, cite must be made of firm practices which have their bottom in inhabitant esthetics but which depend ahead the enveloping aversion to the normal body and its purposes. There are ritual fasts to make overweight people thin and ritual feasts to make thin people plump. Still other rites are worn to make women’s breasts larger if they are small and smaller if they are large. General disappointment with breast shape is signifies in the fact that the ideal form is virtually outside the range of human variation. A few women troubled with almost inhuman hyper mammary growth are so idolize that they make a handsome living by basically going from village to village and authorizing the natives to gaze at them for a charge.
Reference has by now been made to the fact that excretory purposes are ritualized, reutilized, and relegated to privacy. Natural reproduction purposes are similarly distorted. Intercourse is forbidden as a topic and listed as an act. Efforts are made to keep away from pregnancy by the use of supernatural materials or by limiting intercourse to certain stages of the moon. Beginning is in fact very uncommon. When pregnant, women dress so as to hide their condition. Parturition takes place in secret, without friends or relatives to assist, and the bulk of women do not nurse their newborn.
Our evaluation of the ceremony life of the Nacirema has surely shown them to be a magic-ridden people. It is rigid to understand how they have managed to survive so long beneath the trouble which they have forced upon themselves. But even such foreign customs as these obtain on real sense when they are observed with the impending provided by Malinowski when he wrote (1948:70).
Gazing from far and above, from our high places of security in developed empire, it is easy to see all the rudeness and insignificance of the supernatural. But without its power and regulation, early man could not have higher to the higher stages of empire.
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