Heather DeLancett

Cultural Anthropology

Spring 2010

Binary Religious & Mating Rituals of the Nacirema Society

The complexity of religious traditions of the Nacirema can be analyzed through a model

of the sacred and the profane and a seeming creation of interdependent necessity between the

two valuations.  Much work has been done by previous researchers to describe the religious

rituals within this culture in relation to the sacred ceremonies of the various community Hcruhcal

temples.  My own research has led me to identify another important institution within the

religious and mating rituals of the Nacirema.  This institution is known as the Rabbulc among the

majority of the people, but is also referred to as Nrevat and Noolas in some locales.  Specific

sections of the various communities seem to be more faithfully involved and indoctrinated into

either the Hcruhcal or the Rabbulc ceremonies. 

As noted previously, Hcruhcal ceremony attendants involve participants of both sexes,

but with a significantly higher percentage of child-rearing females and their offspring (while any

of the offspring remain before the age of their puberty rites).  The offspring at puberty often

retreat from the Hcruhcal ceremonies in isolated, or age regulated clusters, while studying the

proper rites and behaviours of the Rabbulc until the time of their initiations into the Rabbulc

mystery societies.  During this period of isolated study, the offspring return to the outer Hcruhcal

ceremonies primarily only for mating and death rites.  The Hcruhcal customary ritual attire is a

full-body covering, generally white or grey somber tones, and this attire is not used for other

ritual events not associated with the Hcruhcal rituals.  Occasionally this attire is also adorned for

the purpose of being identified with the group when the males or females seek to trade their

services for the bio-survival tickets to acquire basic resources.  The ability to impress the

laborer's sense of solidarity with the Hcruhcal priestly customs is believed to hold a sacred power

to influence the master of the bio-survival tickets.  It can be noted in numerous examples that

success in this mimicry often leads to advanced social status, but the ritual implements necessary

for social advancement must be gifted upon the laborer by another that has already successfully

mastered these customs.  In this way, certain ritual traditions and protocol are passed from one

generation to another.

The Rabbulc mystery societies are often cloaked in secrecy.  Often various members,

once initiated, do not reveal to outsiders that they are members of the society.  It has been

difficult to determine if there is any central authority which organizes and informs the various

sects.  Members ranking high in social status seem fearful that the medicine men of the Rabbulc

may grow too powerful.  There is tension between the social power of the medicine men and the

Hcruhcal priests.  Some members participate in only either Hcruhcal or Rabbulc rites, though the

majority of Naciremans appear to acknowledge the power and participate in the rituals of both. 

Customary attire for Rabbulc ceremonies is primarily black, but occasionally highly decorative,

and often minimal to allow for ease of movement in the mating ritual dances and status displays. 

Certain features of religious protocol are shared by the Hcruhcal and the Rabbulc - such as the

enhancement of ritual music and the ceremony of purging bad spirits.  Competition for the rites

of purging bad spirits can be found between Hcruhcal priests and the Rabbulc medicine men. 

Often, each of these castes will undermine the power of the other to purge the bad spirits and

mock the techniques of the other institution.  However, this is a complex issue needing many

more years of research and study into the double-coded meanings of these speech acts.  Often, it

can be found that both types of spiritual leaders engage in the rituals and rites of one another

without seeming discord.  All speech acts undermining the Other should be more thoroughly

examined for political intent rather than religious belief.

Afterword:

A revelation in my understanding of the interwoven complexities of the Naciremas'

religious attitudes came in my fifth year of field work living amongst this tribe.  In the years that

came before, my focus was dominated by my attempts to become aware of, and interpret, the

subtleties of their informal language.  At this time, however, I was still a schoolgirl in

anthropologist's clothing.  My own personal pride in my developing self-identity worked as an

underlying reassurance that I was successful in my dedicated efforts to the study of the spoken

and written language - and my bravery for living in the field as an observer amongst a strange

and primitive people.  By about the third year, I recognized that I could translate the signified

reference to the majority of the words spoken in most contexts, and yet the speech acts seemed to

be disconnected from the denoted reference which I translated. I became increasingly sensitive

to a rich polyphony of intensional meaning veiled from me behind their use of language.  As this

sensitivity intensified, I came to a near breakdown of my own ability to separate myself as a

researcher from the research itself.  I would like to think that as a young anthropologist I had not

made such an assumption that a culture or a language could be understood through only an

awareness of literal meaning/reading.  In hindsight, I realize that my academically trained

rejection of this pre-condition led me to difficulty in recognizing my own unanalyzed, unstudied

assumptions at work in my interpretation of cultural practices and societal institutions. Living

among these veiled and double-coded speakers became increasingly more difficult as I re-

examined my own ethnocentric (and I now realize, somewhat naïve) conceptions of the Other.  It

was at the height of my frustration with my inability to perceive these people as anything but a

totally alien and perplexing Other that I came to what I now later can recognize as my

breakthrough.  This crisis of translation changed the course of my research of the Other, and my

approach to understanding what I, the reader, I, the researcher, I, the veiled and double-coded

culture perceiver was bringing to the subject of study.  At this time, I immersed myself in active

participation within the Nacirema to a degree that my colleagues cautioned against - I set out to

explore the boundary between the Self and the Other, and to the best of my ability, temporarily

erase it. At this time, I present my research as an attempt at fusion of active engagement of the

methods and resources used by Naciremas to address my own internal tensions with meaning,

reference, and valuations.