Purity and Danger

The main idea of this chapter is that beliefs that attribute spiritual power to individuals can be related to the patterns of the social structure (139).

One of the aims of ritual is to discover truths that lie outside of rational control and conscious effort. Ritual recognizes the existence of anomalies, outliers, and persons and things in a “marginal state”—broadly, that which lies outside the patterns of society. Examples include unborn children and witches. Danger is often believed to exist in these marginal states. For example, witches are believed to have the ability to conjure up evil powers in the universe. It is often the case that persons with a marginal status in a society are credited with being witches, sorcerers, or the like. Yet just as often, the use (or abuse) of spiritual powers can be correlated with holding a key position in the social structure:

Where the social system explicitly recognises positions of authority, those holding such positions are endowed with explicit spiritual power, controlled, conscious, external and approved—powers to bless or curse. Where the social system requires people to hold dangerously ambiguous roles, these persons are credited with uncontrolled, unconscious, dangerous, disapproved powers—such as witchcraft and evil eye (124).