The Invisible Path of Karma in a Himalayan Purificatory Rite
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2018, Vol 9, Issue 3
Abstract
Indic rites of purification aim to negate the law of karma by removing the residues of malignant past actions from their patrons. This principle is exemplified in the Kahika Mela, a rarely studied religious festival of the West Himalayan highlands (Himachal Pradesh, India), wherein a ritual specialist assumes karmic residues from large publics and then sacrificed to their presiding deity. British officials who had ‘discovered’ this purificatory rite at the turn of the twentieth century interpreted it as a variant of the universal ‘scapegoat’ rituals that were then being popularized by James Frazer and found it loosely connected to ancient Tantric practises. However, observing a recent performance of the ritual significantly complicated this view. This paper proposes a novel reading of the Kahika Mela through the prism of karmic transference. Tracing the path of karmas from participants to ritual specialist and beyond, it delineates the logic behind the rite, revealing that the culminating act of human sacrifice is, in fact, secondary to the mysterious force that impels its acceptance.
Authors and Affiliations
Arik Moran
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP25946
- DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel9030078
- Views 296
- Downloads 10
From Antisemitism to Philosemitism? Trends in American Attitudes toward Jews from 1964 to 2016
This paper uses the feeling thermometer toward Jews on the American National Election (ANES) surveys from 1964 through 2016 to track trends in Americans’ attitudes toward Jews. The feeling thermometer is one of the lon...
The Roman Catholic Tradition in Conversation with Thomas Berry’s Fourfold Wisdom
Taking the threatening anthropogenic global environmental destruction—the anthropocene—as a starting point, this paper examines the Catholic tradition, which has remained relatively indifferent to this looming crisis,...
‘Requiescat in Pace’. Initiation and Assassination Rituals in the Assassin’s Creed Game Series
The Assassin’s Creed game series (Ubisoft 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013a, 2013b, 2014, 2015, 2017) revolves around an alternative interpretation of human history as an ongoing battle between two rival factions: th...
Augustine, Addiction and Lent: A Pedagogic Exercise
The article describes a series of pedagogic exercises developed to help students in a General Education course at a Jesuit university to engage fruitfully with Augustine’s Confessions in a way that will facilitate and...
The Spiritual Care Team: Enabling the Practice of Whole Person Medicine
We will soon be piloting a project titled “Integrating Spirituality into Patient Care” that will form “spiritual care teams” to assess and address patients’ spiritual needs in physician outpatient practices within Adve...