Body Ritual among the Nacirema
by Horace Mitchell Miner
Published in American Anthropologist, vol 58,
June 1956. pp. 503-507. Footnotes were added by Dowell.
Most cultures exhibit a particular configuration or
style. A single value or pattern of perceiving the world often leaves its stamp
on several institutions in the society. Examples are "machismo" in
Spanish-influenced cultures, "face" in Japanese culture, and
"pollution by females" in some highland New Guinea cultures. Here
Horace Miner demonstrates that "attitudes about the body" have a
pervasive influence on many institutions in Nacirema society.
The anthropologist has become so familiar with the
diversity of ways in which different people behave in similar situations that
he is not apt to be surprised by even the most exotic customs. In fact, if all
of the logically possible combinations of behavior have not been found
somewhere in the world, he is apt to suspect that they must be present in some
yet undescribed tribe. The point has, in fact, been expressed with respect to
clan organization by Murdock[1] . In this light, the magical beliefs and
practices of the Nacirema present such unusual aspects that it seems desirable
to describe them as an example of the extremes to which human behavior can go.
Professor Linton[2] first brought the ritual of the
Nacirema to the attention of anthropologists twenty years ago, but the culture
of this people is still very poorly understood. They are a North American group
living in the territory between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of
Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles. Little is known of their
origin, although tradition states that they came from the east. According to
Nacirema mythology, their nation was originated by a culture hero, Notgnihsaw,
who is otherwise known for two great feats of strength—the throwing of a piece
of wampum across the river Pa-To-Mac and the chopping down of a cherry tree in
which the Spirit of Truth resided.
Nacirema culture is characterized by a highly developed
market economy which has evolved in a rich natural habitat. While much of the
people's time is devoted to economic pursuits, a large part of the fruits of
these labors and a considerable portion of the day are spent in ritual
activity. The focus of this activity is the human body, the appearance and
health of which loom as a dominant concern in the ethos of the people. While
such a concern is certainly not unusual, its ceremonial aspects and associated
philosophy are unique.
The fundamental belief underlying the whole system
appears to be that the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to
debility and disease. Incarcerated in such a body, man's only hope is to avert
these characteristics through the use of ritual and ceremony. Every household
has one or more shrines devoted to this purpose. The more powerful individuals
in the society have several shrines in their houses and, in fact, the opulence
of a house is often referred to in terms of the number of such ritual centers
it possesses. Most houses are of wattle and daub construction, but the shrine
rooms of the more wealthy are walled with stone. Poorer families imitate the
rich by applying pottery plaques to their shrine walls.
While each family has at least one such shrine, the
rituals associated with it are not family ceremonies but are private and
secret. The rites are normally only discussed with children, and then only
during the period when they are being initiated into these mysteries. I was
able, however, to establish sufficient rapport with the natives to examine
these shrines and to have the rituals described to me.
The focal point of the shrine is a box or chest which is
built into the wall. In this chest are kept the many charms and magical potions
without which no native believes he could live. These preparations are secured
from a variety of specialized practitioners. The most powerful of these are the
medicine men, whose assistance must be rewarded with substantial gifts.
However, the medicine men do not provide the curative potions for their
clients, but decide what the ingredients should be and then write them down in
an ancient and secret language. This writing is understood only by the medicine
men and by the herbalists who, for another gift, provide the required charm.
The charm is not disposed of after it has served its
purpose, but is placed in the charmbox of the household shrine. As these
magical materials are specific for certain ills, and the real or imagined
maladies of the people are many, the charm-box is usually full to overflowing.
The magical packets are so numerous that people forget what their purposes were
and fear to use them again. While the natives are very vague on this point, we
can only assume that the idea in retaining all the old magical materials is
that their presence in the charm-box, before which the body rituals are
conducted, will in some way protect the worshiper.
Beneath the charm-box is a small font. Each day every
member of the family, in succession, enters the shrine room, bows his head
before the charm-box, mingles different sorts of holy water in the font, and
proceeds with a brief rite of ablution[3]. The holy waters are secured from the
Water Temple of the community, where the priests conduct elaborate ceremonies
to make the liquid ritually pure.
In the hierarchy of magical practitioners, and below the
medicine men in prestige, are specialists whose designation is best translated
as "holy-mouth-men." The Nacirema have an almost pathological horror
of and fascination with the mouth, the condition of which is believed to have a
supernatural influence on all social relationships. Were it not for the rituals
of the mouth, they believe that their teeth would fall out, their gums bleed,
their jaws shrink, their friends desert them, and their lovers reject them.
They also believe that a strong relationship exists between oral and moral
characteristics. For example, there is a ritual ablution of the mouth for
children which is supposed to improve their moral fiber.
The daily body ritual performed by everyone includes a
mouth-rite. Despite the fact that these people are so punctilious[4] about care
of the mouth, this rite involves a practice which strikes the uninitiated
stranger as revolting. It was reported to me that the ritual consists of
inserting a small bundle of hog hairs into the mouth, along with certain
magical powders, and then moving the bundle in a highly formalized series of
gestures[5].
In addition to the private mouth-rite, the people seek
out a holy-mouth-man once or twice a year. These practitioners have an
impressive set of paraphernalia, consisting of a variety of augers, awls,
probes, and prods. The use of these items in the exorcism of the evils of the
mouth involves almost unbelievable ritual torture of the client. The
holy-mouth-man opens the client's mouth and, using the above mentioned tools,
enlarges any holes which decay may have created in the teeth. Magical materials
are put into these holes. If there are no naturally occurring holes in the
teeth, large sections of one or more teeth are gouged out so that the
supernatural substance can be applied. In the client's view, the purpose of
these ministrations[6] is to arrest decay and to draw friends. The extremely
sacred and traditional character of the rite is evident in the fact that the
natives return to the holy-mouth-men year after year, despite the fact that
their teeth continue to decay.
It is to be hoped that, when a thorough study of the
Nacirema is made, there will be careful inquiry into the personality structure
of these people. One has but to watch the gleam in the eye of a holy-mouth-man,
as he jabs an awl into an exposed nerve, to suspect that a certain amount of sadism
is involved. If this can be established, a very interesting pattern emerges,
for most of the population shows definite masochistic tendencies. It was to
these that Professor Linton referred in discussing a distinctive part of the
daily body ritual which is performed only by men. This part of the rite
includes scraping and lacerating the surface of the face with a sharp
instrument. Special women's rites are performed only four times during each
lunar month, but what they lack in frequency is made up in barbarity. As part
of this ceremony, women bake their heads in small ovens for about an hour. The
theoretically interesting point is that what seems to be a preponderantly
masochistic people have developed sadistic specialists.
The medicine men have an imposing temple, or latipso, in
every community of any size. The more elaborate ceremonies required to treat
very sick patients can only be performed at this temple. These ceremonies
involve not only the thaumaturge[7] but a permanent group of vestal maidens who
move sedately about the temple chambers in distinctive costume and headdress.
The latipso ceremonies are so harsh that it is phenomenal
that a fair proportion of the really sick natives who enter the temple ever
recover. Small children whose indoctrination is still incomplete have been
known to resist attempts to take them to the temple because "that is where
you go to die." Despite this fact, sick adults are not only willing but
eager to undergo the protracted ritual purification, if they can afford to do
so. No matter how ill the supplicant or how grave the emergency, the guardians
of many temples will not admit a client if he cannot give a rich gift to the
custodian. Even after one has gained and survived the ceremonies, the guardians
will not permit the neophyte to leave until he makes still another gift.
The supplicant entering the temple is first stripped of
all his or her clothes. In everyday life the Nacirema avoids exposure of his
body and its natural functions. Bathing and excretory acts are performed only
in the secrecy of the household shrine, where they are ritualized as part of
the body-rites. Psychological shock results from the fact that body secrecy is
suddenly lost upon entry into the latipso. A man, whose own wife has never seen
him in an excretory act, suddenly finds himself naked and assisted by a vestal
maiden while he performs his natural functions into a sacred vessel. This sort
of ceremonial treatment is necessitated by the fact that the excreta are used
by a diviner to ascertain the course and nature of the client's sickness.
Female clients, on the other hand, find their naked bodies are subjected to the
scrutiny, manipulation and prodding of the medicine men.
Few supplicants in the temple are well enough to do
anything but lie on their hard beds. The daily ceremonies, like the rites of
the holy-mouth-men, involve discomfort and torture. With ritual precision, the
vestals awaken their miserable charges each dawn and roll them about on their
beds of pain while performing ablutions, in the formal movements of which the
maidens are highly trained. At other times they insert magic wands in the
supplicant's mouth or force him to eat substances which are supposed to be
healing. From time to time the medicine men come to their clients and jab
magically treated needles into their flesh. The fact that these temple
ceremonies may not cure, and may even kill the neophyte, in no way decreases
the people's faith in the medicine men.
There remains one other kind of practitioner, known as a
"listener." This witchdoctor has the power to exorcise the devils
that lodge in the heads of people who have been bewitched. The Nacirema believe
that parents bewitch their own children. Mothers are particularly suspected of
putting a curse on children while teaching them the secret body rituals. The
counter-magic of the witchdoctor is unusual in its lack of ritual. The patient
simply tells the "listener" all his troubles and fears, beginning
with the earliest difficulties he can remember. The memory displayed by the
Nacirema in these exorcism sessions is truly remarkable. It is not uncommon for
the patient to bemoan the rejection he felt upon being weaned as a babe, and a
few individuals even see their troubles going back to the traumatic effects of
their own birth.
In conclusion, mention must be made of certain practices
which have their base in native esthetics but which depend upon the pervasive
aversion to the natural body and its functions. There are ritual fasts to make
fat people thin and ceremonial feasts to make thin people fat. Still other
rites are used to make women's breasts larger if they are small, and smaller if
they are large. General dissatisfaction with breast shape is symbolized in the
fact that the ideal form is virtually outside the range of human variation. A
few women afflicted with almost inhuman hyper-mammary development are so
idolized that they make a handsome living by simply going from village to
village and permitting the natives to stare at them for a fee.
Reference has already been made to the fact that
excretory functions are ritualized, routinized, and relegated to secrecy.
Natural reproductive functions are similarly distorted. Intercourse is taboo as
a topic and scheduled as an act. Efforts are made to avoid pregnancy by the use
of magical materials or by limiting intercourse to certain phases of the moon.
Conception is actually very infrequent. When pregnant, women dress so as to
hide their condition. Parturition takes place in secret, without friends or
relatives to assist, and the majority of women do not nurse their infants.
Our review of the ritual life of the Nacirema has
certainly shown them to be a magic-ridden people. It is hard to understand how
they have managed to exist so long under the burdens which they have imposed
upon themselves. But even such exotic customs as these take on real meaning
when they are viewed with the insight provided by Malinowski[8] when he wrote:
“Looking from far and above, from our high places of
safety in the developed civilization, it is easy to see all the crudity and
irrelevance of magic. But without its power and guidance early man could not
have mastered his practical difficulties as he has done, nor could man have
advanced to the higher stages of civilization.[9]
