Purification

views updated

Purification

Purification, and its attendant issues of purity and pollution, find expression in virtually all religions of the world. Purification rituals move a member from one pole of the continuum between purity and pollution to the other. Just as purity and pollution exist as a continuum, so religions vary along a line between those that express tantamount concern with purity issues and those that disregard the issue almost in its entirety. Nonetheless, more emphasis proves the rule, with purification serving as a major theme in religion. This theme touches on main issues of spirituality such as expiation, healing, renewal, and transcendence, as well as providing for the reintegration of the individual, society, and the cosmos. Despite cultural diversity, the playing out of these themes within religion reveals consistent patterns of ritual and belief.

Emphasis on the type or source of pollution varies greatly among different religiocultural contexts. Nonetheless, certain threads reveal a consistent categorization of purity issues. Concerns with bodily functions, social bonding, and boundary maintenance between the profane and the sacred comprise the three major focuses of religious attention to purity and pollution.

Issues surrounding bodily functions emphasize the provision of boundaries for purposes of control and purification. Of all bodily functions, menstruation and death universally receive attention as the most polluting. Feminist scholars consider issues of purity surrounding menstruation and pregnancy as means of control over and subjugation of women within society. Jewish laws of family purity, or the taharat hamishpakha, deal with issues of menstruation, reproduction, and sexual contact between husband and wife. Strict observers of taharat ha-mishpakha do not touch one another during forbidden days. Throughout a woman's period, and for an additional seven days after her cycle, she is tahmay, or impure. The mikveh, or ritual bath, takes place after this period of time. Upon completing the mikveh a woman may resume sexual congress with her husband. Since only married women can lawfully engage in sexual relations, only they go through the purification ritual of mikveh. This practice remains common only among Orthodox Jews.

Issues concerned with social bonding focus on rites of passage such as birth, adolescence, marriage, and death. Within many traditions, individuals undergoing status change prove most vulnerable to pollution. Rites of passage serve as means of protection and purification.

The final category, concerned with the maintenance of boundaries separating the profane from the divine, finds expression in often elaborate rites of purification enabling humans to approach divinity and serve to set individuals apart from the rest of society for the holy purpose of communing with the divine. In addition, setting apart, or consecrating, space and even time also serves this purpose. Thus rituals surrounding the consecration of buildings and natural areas, clergy, and laity all comprise part of this boundary maintenance.

Rites of purification likewise range greatly in scope and difficulty, from the Catholic ritual of crossing oneself with holy water prior to prayer and the ingestion of a sacrament to painful, prolonged, and dangerous acts of purgation. Five main tools of purification exist: fire, water, detergents, purgation, and scapegoats.

Fire rituals range from fire walking to the use of incense and fumigation. New Age fire walking workshops transport this ancient practice to the contemporary United States. Neopagans often make use of incense in purification preludes to ceremony. Rituals making use of water remain the most widespread. Christian baptism serves as the primary and best-known example of water purification; the Jewish mikveh remains less widespread and less well known. Detergents include the use of salt water, sand, herbal concoctions, ash, and other mixtures designed to cleanse the person on a variety of levels. Santería and Vodou use elaborate detergents in magical and initiation rites. The preparation and use of the detergents often prove quite arduous. All three forms of purification tools mentioned above involve the application of outside materials on the one seeking purification.

Purgation may either utilize physical or psychological means or even mix the two. These practices focus on interior cleansing. Fasting remains the most common means of purgation. Dietary laws serve as a means of maintaining purity. Among religions with dietary laws, Orthodox Judaism upholds the strictest codes, and for devout adherents eating serves an almost sacramental function. Emetics, such as the Native American sweat lodge, or inipi, ceremony also find widespread usage within religions. The sweat lodge ceremony, like the peace pipe ceremony, often serves as a prelude to other ceremonies. Among the Sioux, whose inipi ritual remains the best known of sweat lodge rituals, the sweat lodge is constructed of sixteen poles, bent to form an inverted bowl, which is then covered with hides, blankets, or tarps, and when in use the sweat lodge is closed off from outer air. A pit is dug in the center to hold heated rocks. Water poured over the hot rocks produces steam. A pipe ceremony usually precedes and follows the sweat lodge ceremony. Four separate sweats, representing the four directions, comprise the main ritual.

Psychological means of purification include penance, mortification, confession, sanctification, and the often more taxing and time-consuming practice of pilgrimage. Penance, mortification, confession, and pilgrimage remain primarily in the province of Catholic tradition. Protestant Christianity does include purification rituals above and beyond baptism. Doctrines of sanctification among holiness traditions reveal a rich psychological means of achieving ritual purity beyond that provided by baptism. According to Wesleyan theology surrounding the experience of sanctification, water baptism cleanses believers from sin, and the purely spiritual experience of sanctification then enables them to conduct a blameless life. Means of purification utilizing both physical and psychological elements revolve around human sexuality. Celibacy and strict rules surrounding marriage vows serve to maintain purity.

Finally, the use of substitutions, or scapegoats, as a means of satisfying severe purification rites remains widespread. On a symbolic level, the Christian view of the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth serves as a prime example of scapegoating. On a more physical level, the use of animal sacrifices in Santer?a and Vodou also serves at times as a purification tool.