This page groups practices by the year their recorded history begins. Wikipedia notes that "the term 'cult' first appeared in English in 1617," even though the underlying Latin concept is far older. Browsing by start year lets a visitor see how far back a practice's documented use in its own language reaches.
Facts
Overview
What Defines This GroupingPractices that induce or accompany an altered state the tradition treats as religiously significant - possession, trance, prophetic speech - usually through drumming, dance or sustained rhythmic movement. Grouping them by the state they are held to produce is an outsider's criterion: the traditions concerned classify them by who is invoked and on whose authority. 2 Origins
Whose Classification This IsThe comparative frame is I. M. Lewis's, from Ecstatic Religion (1971), which treats possession and trance as a single field and reads their social distribution - central cults upholding the established order against peripheral cults of the marginal, women above all. That is Lewis's analysis, not a category the traditions use of themselves. 2 Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryUsed, but its validity as a comparative category is disputed 2 Learn More
The Ecstatic Practices
This group gathers ecstatic practices: disciplines that seek altered, heightened or trance states of consciousness through means such as dance, drumming, chanting or whirling, in which the practitioner may feel union with, or possession by, the divine.
The browser will find ecstatic practices from various traditions. The entries describe each practice's form and aim, noting the tradition in which it is found.
14th century
Filter Results1 entry
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession, 3rd edition
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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