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In the movie Avatar there is a scene near the beginning where the female lead rescues the hero by saving him from the wild, dog-like creatures that are about to overpower him. She wounds one animal then, after scattering the others, returns to the body of the dying animal to say a few ritualistic words before ceremonially ending his misery. Anthropologist, paleontologist, and archaeologists who study the paintings and carvings of premodern man suggest that the earliest of rituals were evoked by a supreme respect for all life. The traces of these rituals date back more than 17,000 years when hunting was survival. The rituals were not created for the purpose of worship but rather the expression of what the hunters came to understand as this sacred connection: life was taken that life might continue. There was a bond between the hunted and the hunter.

Rites of passage were the means of determining the preparedness of young men to hunt but also how well they understood this connectedness. These rites were a means for experiencing that which would transform youth into men and a transformation that expressed the experience of becoming at-one with that connection. Later, the development of agriculture would make the rites of hunting less significant but along with the new way of survival came new forms of rituals that recognized the human connectedness to earth, rain, and fire.

Tribal differences would lead to differing interpretations of what exactly is the connectedness. And, as mentioned in earlier posts, not all societies developed their notions of the Sacred along the same time line; some went in variant directions while others saw no need to continue toward more modern reasoning. Some ancient forms of ritual and worship by being less complex have once again become desirable. The common thread in our human history is this inescapable human need to connect with whatever it is that is at the core of all existence and from which life itself flows.

Post modern thinking has raised the thought that ritual and religion are unnecessary. To that end western society is moving in a direction that views established forms of religious expression obsolete while at the same time deifying scientific ways of obtaining that which humans have always sought: what connects us to life? Are the rituals of scientific discovery any more than a means for discovering that which is beyond our human ability to comprehend? Is the drive of scientific research any less than the primitive desire to reach as far as our human capacity will allow?

Perhaps it is an over simplification but comparing the cultural and religious transition from hunters to farmers would seem to me to be unavoidable. The search is still what it has always been: what is “ultimate reality”?

Coffee's good this morning so let me pour you another cup?

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