The vivid make-up completely masks the human face, taking several hours of skilled artistry to apply. The Theyyam who will shortly become the goddess Puthiya Bhagavathi (pictured above) is preparing for his transformation in a discrete area set back from the main temple under the trees. 'Face-writing’ is an integral part of the external metamorphosis from mortal to deity. Whilst the modes theory has received considerable attention in the last decade from historians, archaeologists, anthropologists and cognitive scientists (Martin & Whitehouse, 2005 McCauley, 2001 McCauley & Lawson, 2002 McCauley & Whitehouse, 2005 Whitehouse & Martin, 2004 Whitehouse & McCauley, 2005) and there is much to support it in the ethnographic record (Ketola 2002 Naumescu, 2008 Whitehouse & Laidlaw, 2004 Xygalatas, 2007), the above predictions about variation in ritual form have not yet been tested using a statistical framework and global sampling of cultures.It’s about 5am in the morning, and for the last few hours I’ve been immersed in my first Theyyam ceremony at a small Hindu temple on India’s Malabar Coast in North Kerala. Three Theyyams have already appeared this night, each one in a trance-like state, embodying the spirit of a different deity. Here, we construct a database recording frequency, arousal and contextual information for 645 religious rituals from 74 cultures around the globe, as documented in the electronic Human Relations Area Files (eHRAF). In line with this dichotomy, recent work relating the modes theory to archaeological evidence from the early Neolithic site at Catalhoyuk suggests that the emergence of a doctrinal mode may have been associated with the increasing reliance on agricultural production (Whitehouse & Hodder, in press). Whilst the modes theory has received considerable attention in the last decade from historians, archaeologists, anthropologists and cognitive scientists (Martin & Whitehouse, 2005 McCauley, 2001 McCauley & Lawson, 2002 Whitehouse & Martin, 2004 ) and there is much to support it in the ethnographic record (Ketola 2002 Naumescu, 2008 Whitehouse & Laidlaw, 2004 Xygalatas, 2007), the above predictions about variation in ritual form have not yet been tested using a statistical framework and global sampling of cultures. Here, we construct a database recording frequency, arousal and contextual information for 645 religious rituals from 74 cultures around the globe, as documented in the electronic Human Relations Area Files (eHRAF).Įthnographic, historical, archaeological and experimental work suggests the existence of two basic clusters of ritual dynamics or 'modes of religiosity' - a low-frequency, high-arousal cluster linked to the formation of small cohesive communities (imagistic mode) and high-frequency, low-arousal cluster associated with larger, more centralized social morphology (doctrinal mode).
Currently, however, we lack a large-scale survey of ritual variation on which to test such predictions.
Here, we compile data on 645 religious rituals from 74 cultures around the globe, extracted from the Human Relations Area Files, revealing that the cultural morphospace of ritual form favours rituals that are indeed either low-frequency and highly dysphorically arousing or high-frequency with lower arousal and that these ritual dynamics are linked to group size and structure. These data also suggest that low dysphoric arousal, high-frequency rituals may have been tied to the advent of agriculture and subsequent emergence of the first large-scale civilizations.
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