Spiritual Practices and Beliefs Quiz

Altered States of Consciousness

• Brainwave states:
  • Beta: Waking, consciousness
  • Alpha: Daydreaming, light trance
  • Theta: REM dreaming, deep trance
  • Delta: Deep sleep, unconscious
  • REMINDER: BAT-D!
• Types of Altered States of Consciousness (ASC):
  • Hypnagogic: State between sleep and wake
  • Hallucinogenic: Psychedelic states induced by drugs
  • REMINDER: "Hallucinate"
  • Spirit possession: Instills feelings of disassociation
  • Hypnotic trance: Hypnosis/trance/mesmerism
  • REM dreaming: Lucid dreaming can occur
• Brain Structures:
  • Left hemisphere: Logical, analytical; Linear thinking, sequential time experience
    • Controls the RIGHT side of the body
  • Right hemisphere: Intuitive, emotional, holistic thinking, spatial time experience
    • Controls the LEFT side of the body; Is connected to ASC!

Additional Information

• Pineal gland: Releases melatonin; Called "the 3rd eye"
• Reticular Formation: Governs sleep and waking; Called the "seat of consciousness"
• Temporal lobes: Stimulating them causes visions and feelings of sensed presence/ASC
• Hypnosis: The state of putting someone into a trance
  • Used to be called Mesmerism
  • After Mesmer, it was renamed "hypnoticism"
  • REMINDER: Sigmund Freud was Charcot's student!
• The God Helmet: Brain stimulation can evoke religious experiences
  • A device that uses magnetic fields to stimulate temporal lobes
  • Leads to altered states of consciousness (ASC) and feelings of divine presence
• Doors of Perception: Book written by Aldous Huxley
  • Named after a poem by William Blake
  • Discusses experiments with mescaline (a hallucinogen)

Entheogens

• Entheogen: Plants ritually consumed for religious purposes; Believed to contain divine life force or energy from the gods
  • Ayahuasca: 2 plants; Used by Amazonian shamans in Santo Daime (Brazil)
  • Peyote: A cactus that contains mescaline; used by native American churches
  • Ergot: Brain fungus; Consumed in a ritual at Eleusis
    • Eating ergot-infected bread causes visions (St. Anthony's fire)
  • Fly agaric: Mushroom; Used by Tungus shamans, associated with Vikings
  • Cannabis: Hemp/hashish; Used by medieval group (Assassins), and Rastafarians

Syncretism

• Syncretism: A hybrid religion that combines two earlier religions, often of an indigenous group and a colonizing faith
• Syncretic religions are often influenced by Western European spiritualism

Spiritualism

• Began with the Fox sisters and table-rappings
• Spiritualist churches believe in:
  • Progressive afterlife
  • Spirit communication through mediums
  • Reincarnation and multiple levels of spiritual existence

Spirit Possession

• Widespread practices: Ouija boards, automatic writing, and table séances
• Theories of possession:
  • Emic theory: Possession involves actual spirit beings
  • Theatric theory: Possession is a performance art
  • Dissociation: Temporary displacement of the ego (similar to multiple personality disorder)
• Rhythm drumming, singing is related to trance states
• Other Information: Possessed people report changes in physical appearance, and potential
• Non-Haitian people report being possessed at ceremonies

Afro-christian religions

• Vodun: French slaves in Haiti; Hougans and mambos (practitioners)
  • Shrines
  • Mediators - Lwa, Legba
  • Controversies: Real zombies?
• Santeria: Cuban slaves; Santeros, Babalaos
  • Shrines: Altars in homes or botanicas
  • Mediators: Orisha, Chango, Yemaya
  • Controversies: Animal sacrifices
• Candomblé: Brazilian slaves
  • Practitioners: Umbandistas (mixed Kardecism and spiritualism)
  • Shrines: Altars in homes
  • Mediators: Ogoun (St. Peter), Oloddua (St. Anthony)
  • Controversies: "Surgeon of the Rusty Knife" (Jose Argago possessed by a German World War II doctor)

Rasa Tafari

• Founder: Marcus Garvey (1930s Jamaica)
• Sacred text: Holy Piny
• Prophecy: "A king will be crowned and your house of redemption is at hand."

Revitalization Movements

• Revitalization Movement: A deliberate, organized, conscious effort by members of a society to construct a more satisfying culture
• Often found in cultures suffering from colonialization
• Can be secular or religious

Ghost Dance

• Founder: Jack Wilson and Paiute Indians
• Practice: 19th century Plain Indians
• Rituals: Circle dances, chanting, ghost shirts (to protect from white man's bullets)
• Beliefs: Ghost dance would revive buffalo herds and ancestors
• Ended by the Wounded Knee Massacre (1890)

Cargo Cults

• Founded: Post-World War II Pacific Melanesian Island cultures
• Rituals: Used statues of soldiers and planes to magically compel cargo to return
• Beliefs: Attacked colonial powers for holding back cargo

Serpent Handlers

• Practitioners: Holiness-Pentecostal (Charismatic) churches in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Oklahoma ("Bible Belt")
• Rituals: Handle poisonous snakes & drink strychnine (toxins)
• Beliefs: "By faith, you will be saved."
• REMINDER: T-O-K!
• Note: Garden of Eden & the snake

Zapatista Revolt

• Uprising in 1994, Chiapas, Mexico
• Characterized as a secular Mayan revitalization movement, or as a continuation of earlier movements like the Caste War of Yucatan or the War of the Talking Crosses
• REMINDER: Two C’s (Caste War + Talking Crosses)

Christianity

• During Christ's time, Judean institutions were distributed and crumbling

• Wanted to purify the land by driving out Hellenism and Roman occupation

• Zealots of Masada

• Essenes

• NOTE: These are historical religious movements; not directly related to current Christianity in practice

Shamanism

• Shaman: Master of the spirits (Tungus/Saaman)
  • Roles: Diviner, healer, judge, prophet, medium (spirit communicator)
• Eliade: Master of the archaic technique of ecstasy (e.g., Shamanism began 100,000 years ago in Siberia, experimenting with fly agaric)
• World Tree (Axis Mundi, Polestar): Great tree connecting the 3 realms
  • Underworld
  • Middle realm (everyday world)
  • Celestial realm (e.g., star and sky spirits, shamanic flight)
• Carlos Castaneda (aka Arana - Peruvian): Outlet for knowledge of shamanism (note: Was later a fraud)

Witchcraft

• Evil Eye: Gaze/power of witches causing misfortune, curses, or hexes
• Mobility Hypothesis: Societies settle → accumulation of private property → arguments over inheritance
  • Viewing women as interfering, leading to accusations of witchcraft
  • Connected to changes in gender roles
• Malleus Maleficarum: A book (2 Dominicans) blamed for the death of millions of women during the 15th-18th centuries
  • Accused witches of having intercourse with the devil, giving souls to the devil, identifying marks
  • NOTE: The events related to these accused women did occur

Salem Witch Hunts

• Key location: 1690s Massachusetts
• Tituba, a black slave, initiated witchcraft hysteria
• Led to widespread accusations against innocent women stemming from dreams

Wicca

• Founder: Gerald Gardner (England, 1940s)
• Beliefs: Ecology, feminism, god/goddess duo
• Practices: Belonging to a coven/grove, or being a solo practitioner
• REMINDER: Understand the symbolic misconceptions surrounding this group

Rituals

• Rituals are fixed actions, culturally & cyclically determined to reach specific ends.
  • Tied to beliefs and practices
  • Symbolic numbers are often used in rituals
• Types found in various cultures:
  • Life cycle rituals
  • Calendrical rituals
  • Funerary rituals

Types of Ritual, Mysticism, and Liminality

• Types of Rituals:
  • Temporal: Orienting of time (e.g., calendars)
  • Spatial: Orienting of space
  • Body: Physical transformation
  • Fertility (Crops, people)
  • Divination: Telling future
  • Healing: Curing illness
  • Taboos: Negative prohibitions in society
  • Body alteration (e.g., elongation, distortion; painting, branding, scarring, circumcision, clothing)
  • Fasting, Flesh mortification
  • Sadomasochism
• Liminality: Van Gennep - describes between two states of existence that rituals address and resolve
• Examples: Quinceañera, marriage, funeral

Solstices and Equinoxes

• Key markers establishing 4 seasons worldwide
• Marked by rituals

Mayan Calendar

• Halve: 365-day calendar, similar to ours
• Solcan: 265-day sacred calendar
• Align every 52 years; Days begin from zero date - August 11, 3114 BCE (Gregorian calendar)

Pilgrimages

• Pilgrimage: Traveling to a sacred site for devotion
• Omphalos: Sacred stone in Greece representing the axis/centre of the world. Many believe their cult sites are the center of the world.

Pilgrimage sites

• Santiago de Compostela (Spain) - Pilgrims wear scallop shells
• Al Aqsa (Northern Israel) - It's a golden dome structure; believed to stand on the original temple mount in Jerusalem
• Glastonbury (SW England) - site with associated beliefs about Jesus's visit and other figures and events

Totem and Taboo

• Totem (todem): Meaning ancestor or tribe.
• Manitou: A person's personal totem or guardian spirit (often found via a vision quest)
• Totemism: Clans, animals, or objects (related to legend) as ancestors
• Taboo: A forbidden thing
  • Prohibitions on action, associations, etc.
• Hinduism - The Caste system
• Decalogue (10 Commandments) and Noah's Laws

Religion and the State

• The relationships between religion, laws, and political entities.
  • Theocracy: Religion = law
  • Divine kingship: Religious officials control a divine or demigod king
  • Dual state: Religion & state = separate but equal
  • Secular state: Religion & state = separate
  • Atheist state: Religion = forbidden
• Fundamentalism versus Modernism
  • Fundamentalism: Religious texts literally true & unchanging
  • Modernism: Religious texts are to be viewed through a contemporary lens

Techgnosis

• Techgnosis: The seeking of knowledge (gnosis) via technology
• Techgnostic religions (specific examples):
  • Extropians: (extropy = opposed to entropy = technology)
  • Raelians (UFO-based & belief in human cloning)
  • Church of Scientology (e-meter to measure spiritual progress)

Miscellaneous

• Christian Nationalism: Belief the US was founded as a Christian nation.
• Manifest destiny: Belief that God chose the US for a specific purpose
• Singularity: Idea that AI will become sentient, changing human societies
• Dalai Lama: Tibetan Buddhist leader
• Clash of civilizations - Samuel Huntington's thesis about Islam and Western civilization conflict. (REMINDER: Clash → crash)

Other Details

• Note: If a question mentions "forbidden fruit," the answer is pomegranate.
• Note: Reminder of relevant terminology, terms, or places

Test your knowledge on various spiritual practices and beliefs, especially those related to Native American traditions, Afro-Christian religions, and Spiritualism. This quiz covers important aspects such as rituals, roles of practitioners, and key concepts in spirituality and consciousness.