This book is a (heorclical essay, an exploration oľan idea which was suggested by an earlier much more specific and much less speculative piece of work. This earlier study was a history of the Malagasy circumcision ritual which was published as From Blessing to Violence (Bloch 1986). This historical study revealed that, while some aspects of the ritual adapted functionally to changing politico-economic circumstances, other aspects remained unchanged through time. These unchanging aspects were not in any sense arbitrary; rather they made up a central minimal structure or "core" of the ritual process. The different historical forms taken at one time or another by Malagasy circumcision always related to this core as logical elaborations of iL although at some periods the ritual was very much elaborated while at others it was reduced to its simplest form. Since this simplest form of the ritual process persisted unchanged even when its context was changing, it presented a problem for those theories which explain phenomena in terms of their Hi with other aspects of culture and society. The explanation could only be that it depended on matters which could not be reduced to the specific, historical circumstances in which the performances of the ritual occurred. I present this essay as an exploration of the nature of this irreducible core of the ritual process, and the factors which do in fact determine it. The enquiry is not, however, confined to Madagascar. In fact, while in one light Mcrina circumcision ritual appears as specific and typical of well-known Malagasy cultural themes, in another light it seems to concern aspects of the human predicament which would be relevant in very many cultures. The structure which I perceive in the basic minimal formof Merina ritual seems to me lo be present in a wide range of religious phenomena from many parts of the world, each of which again displays these two sides: each belongs to its own specific culture, yet each also shows a striking structural resemblance to the others. This claim to quasi-universality may seem surprising. However, it will be justified at least in part if the suggestion I shall develop in this book about the relationship between religious process and notions of biological life and death are found lo he convincing. To pursue this exploration, 1 have deliberately chosen an extremely varied set of ethnographic examples. All of these are forms of what I would broadly refer to as religious phenomena. Bui although it was Merina circumcision which started me off on this search, not all of my examples are rituals of the same sort. Thus, the Merina circumcision ritual could be described as initiation, as could the Papua New Ciuinean example discussed in the next chapter, but none of the other examples in the book could be called initiation rituals. And although I lind the unchanging aspects of religious process mainly in rituals, the book also takes in subjects which anthropologists would not normally call rituals at all. myth from Malaysia (chapter 7) and some observations which might more usually be found labelled as kinship or politics (chapter 5). The range of rituals discussed in the book includes rituals from Fast Africa and South Fast Asia which arc normally called sacrifices (chapter 3). spirit mediumship from southern Africa and the Philippines (chapters 3 and 5). millenarian cults from Madagascar and the Near East (chapter 6), marriage rituals from Tibet and ancient Rome (chapter 5| and total ritual systems from India and Japan which contain a little of all these elements (chapter 4). This crossing of established categories is of course nothing new. Anthropologists are increasingly familiar with the idea that such terms as 'sacrifice', 'possession' and 'initiation* have a very limited validity in religious anthropology. Such definitions are always rooted in a specific cultural tradition, whether that of the author or of the people he writes about, and arc therefore inadequate for cross-cultural analysis. They may be used provisionally, as convenient pointers, but if their application is stretched beyond that they become arbitrary, Ifgeneral theoretical interpretations are lobe attempted at all, they cannot be confined within these sorts of definitions. What is needed, and what is attempted in part here, is some much more all-embracing framework which sidesteps some of the old problems. This is undoubtedly an exercise fraught with dangers, both methodological and theoretical. Having got hold of the idea of a widely present structure within religious processes, we would surely lind it easy to make a tendentious selection of examples, and make this structure appear to be present everywhere. Or else, one might present the evidence in such a way as to highlight only the aspects which fit the theory, obscuring those which do not. Whether I have sufficiently avoided these pitfalls must in the end be judged by the reader, since it would be impossible to present enough examples to demonstrate generality at the level at which the claim is being made. The selection of examples from very different cultures may go some way towards substantiating the argument, but more importantly readers and critics may choose to continue the exercise by trying to see whether what is proposed here stands up to the test of other cases they know. As for the problem of skewed presentation, I hope at least that by taking my (inevitably much abbreviated) ethnographic examples from widely available sources I have made it easy for readers to go back to the originals and consider for themselves whether the examples lit my argument. The theoretical problems raised by the enterprise are rather different. First, there is a familiar difficulty with arguments such as this. Inevitably, the demonstration of the presence of structural similarities in the religious phenomena discussed seems almost to beg the question; it presumes the existence of what it wants to show exists. This problem is I think to some extent unavoidable, and the argument will finally depend on its ability to persuade the independent reader that the structures discussed are real and not merely the imagination of the author. However, this is a not uncommon problem of attempts to push beyond established theoretical and ethnographic interpretations, and I hope to convince the reader that it will be worth the risk. Secondly, there is the problem of what is meant by the concept under discussion in this book, of a minimum irreducible structure which is common to many ritual and other religious phenomena. This will become gradually clearer in its specifics as the argument is developed through the examples in the main text. I should, however, perhaps dispense with two general points here. Firstly, I do not intend to suggest something like a 'lowest common denominator* of a range of examples. This sort of definition (for instance of 'kinship* or 'marriage*! characterised much anthropological writing in the fifties and sixties (Necdham 1971). but the similarities claimed between eases have almost always been much loo vague to be helpful. My intentions are somewhat closer to those of writers who, like the historian of religions Mircea Fliade, explicitly claimed to be describing an essence or'archetype" of a particular class of phenomena. Eliade claimed that in his 'archetypes' he was able lo identify the irreducible components of religious ideas in different cultures (Eliade 1969). My approach is similar to Eliade's in that both his 'archetypes* and the minimal structures which I identify arc seen as the product of general characteristics of human beings* Yet the general characteristics envisaged in the two arguments could not be more different. Eliade's archetypes do not in any way relate to the material existence of human beings. The character of his archetypes therefore remains vague and mystical. By contrast with Eliade, I argue that the startling quasi-univcrsality of the minimal religious structures I identify rests on something much more specific. That is, it derives from the fact lhal the vast majority of societies represent human life as occurring within a permanent framework which transcends the natural transformative process of birth, growth, reproduction* ageing and death. It is the near-universality of this construct. I argue, which accounts for the occurrence and re-occurrence of the same structural pattern in ritual and other religious representations at many times and in many places. Ultimately. therefore» 1 am seeking to establish a connection between a religious construction and universal human constraints. Of course, this book cannot he considered to have provided a satisfactory demonstration of such a connection, and does not claim to do so, but it was with this aim in view that the exploration of which it forms a part was undertaken, and in this direction that the theoretical conclusions presented here will lead. The nature of the ritual processes I am concerned with will gradually become clearer in the light of the examples discussed in subsequent chapters. However, a brief presentation can be given here, as a preliminary guide to the argument which follows. These irreducible structures of religious phenomena arc ritual representations of the existence of human beings in lime- In fact this ritual representation is a simple transformation of the material processes of life in plants and animals as well as humans. The transformation takes place in an idiom which has two distinguishing features: first, it is accomplished through a classic three-stage dialectical process, and secondly it involves a marked element of violence or (to use a term less familiar in our society than in many of those discussed here) of conquest. I shall refer to this process as the idiom of 'rebounding violence*, In all cultures there is a level of perception where bifth is seen as either the beginning of or at least a significant stage in the period of growth which has the potential to engender further reproduction. The reproductive stage is in turn seen at one level of perception as followed by a period of gradual decay leading to death. This process is perceived as common to all kinds of living things. Further, the transformative dialectic of different kinds of living things is seen as linked, if onlv because one species provides food for another The representation of life in rituals begins with a complete inversion of everyday understandings. The life evoked in rituals is an 'other' life, described by such words as "beyond' and 'invisible', and located "in the sky\ 'under the earth' or 'on a mountain where nobody goes*. In these ritual representations. instead of birth and growth leading to a successful exigence, it is weakening and death which lead to a successful existence. For example, initiation frequently begins with a symbolic 'killing* of the initiates, a 'killing' which negates their birth and nurturing. The social and political significance of such a passage is that by entering into a world beyond process, through the passage of reversal, one can then be part of an entity beyond process, for example, a member of a descent group. Thus, by leaving this life, it is possible lo see oneself and others as part of something permanent, therefore life-transcending. Moving out of this world into another can, however, only be a partial answer to the problem posed by the politico-social requirement of constructing a totality consisting of living beings, which is. unlike its constituent parts, permanent. The reason why the move into the beyond is ultimately politically unsatisfactory is simply that, if you leave this life, you leave this life, and so the constructed totality becomes of no relevance to the here and now. For example, in ihe case of initiation, if the result of the ritual were lhal the initiates had become part of an enduring entity in the 'other world*, this entity would have no political significance. In fact, in the cases examined in this book, a solution seems to be found which rejoins the here and nowr and the transcendental units which the rituals create. At first sight, this solution appears to be simply a contradiction of the move into the other world since it is a return into this world. However, as we shall see, the contradiction is avoided by making the return into this world something quite different from the departure from it. In the first part of the ritual the here and now* is simply left behind by the move towards the transcendental This initial movement represents the transcendental as supremely desirable and the here and now as of no value. The return is different. In the return the transcendental is not left behind but continues to be attached to those who made (he initial move in its direction; its value is not negated. Secondly, the return to the here and now is really a conquest of the here and now by the transcendental. In the case of initiation, the initiate does not merely return to the world he had left behind. He is a changed person, a permanently transcendental person who can therefore dominate the here and now of which he previously was a part. The return is therefore a conquest of the kind of thing which had been abandoned but. as if to mark the difference between the going and the coming back, the actual identity of the vital here and now is altered. Vitality is regained, but it is not the home-grown native vitality which was discarded in the first part of the rituals that is regained, but, instead, a conquered vitality obtained from outside beings, usually animals, but sometimes plants, other peoples or women. In ritual representations, native vitality is replaced by a conquered, external, consumed vitality. It is through this substitution that an image is created in which humans can leave this life and join the transcendental yet still not bc alienated from the here and now. They become part of permanent institutions, and as superior beings they can reincorporate the present life through the idiom of conquest or consumption. If the rituals dramatise a journey of the person to the beyond and a conquering return, this mirrors a similar two-way experience which is fell as taking place inside the person. The first part of the rituals involves an experiential dichotomisation of the subjects into an over-vital side and a transcendental side. Then, as in the external drama, the transcendental drives out the vital so that the person becomes. Tor u time, entirely transcendental. This victory of one side of the person over the other is what requires the first element of violence in the rituals. This violence is, however, only a preliminary to a subsequent violence which involves the triumphant experiential recover)' of vitality into the person by the transcendental element. However (and again as in the external drama), this recovery of vitality docs not compromise the superiority of the transcendental identity, because the recovered vitality is mastered by the transcendental. Unlike ihe nulivc vitality of the first stage which must be driven out of oneself, the vitality reintroduced in the second stage is taken from external sources and is consumed as the food of the transcendental subject, often literally through the mouth. This second violence can therefore be considered as the consequence of the first; it is the elimination of ordinary vitality which necessitates its replacement by a new. plundered vitality, and the contact with the transcendental which provides the impetus for this forced substitution. The whole ritual process can therefore be understood as the construction of a formof'rebounding violence* both at the public and at the experiential level In some ways this argument is similar lo the old model usually attributed to Van Gennep for rites of passage: in other ways it is different (Van Gcnnep 1909). Van Gennep stressed how actors pass from a stage where they are separated from society, to a liminal state, lo a stage where they arc reintegrated into society. I retain the idea of the three stages but I attribute lo lhem quite a different content. While Van Gennep sees the drama of the first stage as a separation between the primary actor and the group he or she leaves behind, I see it principally as a dramatically constructed dichotomisation located within the body of each of the participants. The second stage for Van Gennep. and even more for Turner, is a period of liminality quite separate from the rest of the sequence (Turner 1969). Here it is seen as the moment when the initiate is given the transcendental part of his identity which will dominate for the rest of his life* Finally, Van Gennep describes the third stage as a reintegration into society, and Turner as a reintegration into the mundane world Here the third stage is not seen as a return lo the condition left behind in the first stage but as an aggressive consumption of a vitality which is different in origin from that which had originally been lost. Van Gcnnep and Turner have Utile lo say about violence. In so far as they recognise it, u is a murk ofthe initial stage of separaiion/rheyeomplelely miss the significance of ihe much more dramatic violence of the return to the mundane. For me, however, this conquering and consuming is central because il is what explains the political outcomes of religious action. First of all, it needs to be violent, otherwise the subordination of vitality would not be demonstrated. Secondly, this final consumption is outwardly directed towards other species. In many of the examples discussed we shall see how the consumption of animals, for example, can be represented as merely a preliminary lo expansionist violence against neighbours. The book argues, therefore, that in the core ritual structure which it identifies, the sequence which leads to 'rebounding violence', there lies an explanation of the symbolism of violence present in so many religious phenomena. Furthermore, it argues that there also lies the explanation of the often-noted fact that religion so easily furnishes an idiom of expansionist violence to people in u whole range of societies, an idiom which, under certain circumstances, becomes a legitimation for actual violence.