Позициите за примарноста на митот или за примарноста на ритуалот во теориите за светото

Abstract

Myth and ritual in this article are outlined as essential components of the religious belief and practice, and thus of religion in general. They are particularly shown through the theories of the belief in the sacred as the source of religion. Two central lines of thought are analysed: the position of myth’s primacy over ritual, and the position of ritual’s primacy over myth, consenting a real difficulty in the strict separation of the two, let alone of one’s chronological and axiological dominance over the other. Myth understood as a performative, sacred tale of the primordial societies, and as preeminent in its relation with ritual, is shown in several theoreticians: Bronislaw Malinowski, Lucien Levy-Bruhl, Ernst Cassirer, Claude Lévi- Strauss and Mircea Eliade. Ritual grasped as a predetermined customary action, mainly in religious context, and as primary in the religious phenomenon, is outlined in mainstream ritualists, like Jane Harrison, Lord Raglan and Stanley Hyman, but also in hesitating authors, like Emile Durkheim and (again) Cassirer. Some attention on the fairy-tale as a declined myth and/or ritual is briefly focused. The impossibility to strictly decide whether myth or ritual is primary and dominant in the origin and continued functioning of religion is underlined.