of cultures – Time
and culture
The trees of the ancient forest almost cover up the moon and the stars. The light of the fire illuminates the masks, the symbols painted on the bodies, the lip decorations. The shaman sings about the birth of the cosmos and the time, which also happened at night. This night is also the night of creation. The community finds a new home, and by the time the Sun rises, the world and the time will be reborn.
Lajos Boglár describes similar rites in his study titled The Concept of Time in Indian Cultures, as well as in several of his other writings. (BOGLÁR 2020: 66–76)
Researchers of society and religion met with many of these events while doing their work. Out of many, we may read about one of the most exciting examples in Mircea Elia-de’s book The Sacred and the Profane. Based on the works of researcher of religion E. Wil-liams and of Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Eliade recounts the sea-voyage of a sailor from a New Guinea community. As the sailor is put out to sea, he identifies with a mythical hero, Aori.
He wears the same dress and headdress as Aori in mythical time, at the beginning of time.
He paints his face black, dances on the deck, as Aori did, opens his hand as Aori spread his wings. The word “like”, however, does not accurately reflect the meaning of the actions, since he is not “like” Aori, but then and there he himself is Aori. The time he takes off for fishing is the time of myths. His path, persona, activity identifies with the ancestor and the unchanging time of myths. (ELIADE 1996: 60–67)
Evans-Pritchard, who conducted research among the Sudanese Nuers too, also reports that in the 1930s, the tree under which mankind originated from, still stood in the land of the Nuers. In the reality of Nuers, this was a complete and evident fact. According to Evans-Pritchard, this reality is determined, among other things, by the structure through which
the Nuers perceive the flow of time and memory. This structure is formed by successive age groups that define the Nuer society. The Nuers record six consecutive age groups. Another fundamental component of the Nuer society is the sectoral system, which also places the living and the ancestor of the sector in a permanent structure. The size and the extent of the sectors in the past do not change, regardless of how many generations follow one another.
The time of myths is therefore such a reality that is beyond the boundaries of generational history, regardless of whether or not (or perhaps because of) it fixes the fact of permanence in the changing and passing world. The memory in Nuerland encompasses approximately a century, and since the structures of constancy do not change, the distance between the present and the beginning of the world also remains unchanged. (EVANS-PRITCHARD 1963)
The question arises, is there any “objective time” in our world or is time created by us?
Alfred Gell, in his Time and Social Anthropology, considers time to be universal, experienced by all, but lived and interpreted differently by different cultures. Accordingly, we all perceive the repetition of nights and days, moon cycles, or sun years, as we experience aging and passing, but we measure, explain, and record it differently. (GELL 2000: 13–35)
Thomas Crump in his book, Anthropology of Numbers, recalls the dramatic example of a variety of time experiences. In 1519 CE, according to European time notation, the Aztecs, indigenous people of Mexico expected the arrival of Quetzalcoatl (their god of wind, air, and learning). In this year of their 52-year cycle of time, Quetzalcolat was to arrive on the 9-wind day, dedicated to Him, from the east, dressed in black, to dislodge Tezcatlipoc, the currently ruling god.
On the same day, on April 22 according to the Western calendar, Cortez landed on the coast of the future Mexico. And since that day was Good Friday, the Spanish conqueror was wearing a black outfit along with a hat, according to the fashion of that era. The time, the black outfit and the hat resembled what the expected diety was supposed to wear, and have resulted in the combination of time perceptions, which helped Cortez with his small army to take over and occupy the Aztec Empire with little effort. (CRUMP 1998)
At the same time, we can meet with differences in time perceptions even within one culture. Example of it can be found in the common practice of Catholic religion in Hungary.
During Shrovetide, the last three days of the Carnival season preceding Ash Wednesday – as we learn from the work of János Bárth titled The Ethnography of the Catholic Hungari- ans – the Catholic Church organized sacrament worship in which high school students of the Catholic small towns were required to participate. We do not know how happy the students were about this, but we do know that the last three days was the highlight of the Carnival, marked by many fun festivities, such as wearing masks, performing rituals, along with noisy parades during which social- and lifestyle constraints – for example commonly accepted sexual conducts – could be overturned. Time perception of the “profane” world and the rhythm of the “holy” thus can differ even within one culture. In addition, the two times are in dialectical relation as they include opposite values. In the above example, the two times come to agreement on the last day of the Carnival, day after Shrove Tuesday, on Ash Wednesday. Ending the time of “profane” on Ash Wednesday, on the beginning of the
“holy” time of Lent, preparation for Easter, during Mass – as it is even nowadays – the priest marked the forehead of the worshippers with the cross of repentance using ash, which is the symbol of death, passing and repentance. The ash came from burning last year’s Palm Sunday’s blessed branches of willow at the beginning of Holy Week. Before Mass, the priest sanctified the ashes, with which he then marked the forehead of the believers, using the words: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Thus, the “holy” time enclosed, “defeated”, adapted to the events of “profane” time. (BÁRTH 1990)
Elements of the Jewish celebration of Purim are like that of the Carnival. Because in the Jewish calendar Purim falls on the time of the non-Jewish Carnival (although on dif-ferent days due to the differences between the two ways of measuring time), some of the custom elements could really “cross over” between Purim and the Carnival. However, in the celebration of Purim, time of the ‘profane’ and of the ‘holy’ rather entwine, instead of separate distinctively. The events of the celebration tend to reveal this.
Purim, the celebration of sortilege, also known as the Festival of Lots, is a Jewish hol-iday that commemorates the saving of the Jewish people from Haman, who was planning to kill all the Jews. This took place in the ancient Achaemenid Persian Empire. The story is recorded in the Biblical Book of Esther. The day of deliverance became a day of feasting and rejoicing. In the heart of celebration is the reading of the scroll containing the story of Esther. Those who partake in the ritual follow the words of the reader, and when the text comes to Haman, the name of the evil, rattles sound in the synagogue. There are some who sound vuvuzelas, horns commonly known from being used at soccer games, while others are whistling, booing or pounding on the benches.
The story of Purim (to which similar one has been repeated over and over again in Jewish history) thus become relivable at every festive occasion. Rabbi Vries’s book of Jew-ish Rituals and Symbols recounts the atmosphere of Purim in the Synagogue,The atmosphere is not quite reverent. After all, it is Purim! Man is happily consoles himself with the his-torical certainty that escape is always near, and the enemy is always defeated.” (VRIES 2000: 99)
Thus, ritual time makes it possible to experience the “time of the ancestors”, that it has a living content in the actual situation as well, and this way for the current and for future generations as well. In the Purim, as is in the case of the other holidays, the “sacred” and
“social-ethnic” components of Jewish history do not separate.
Entertainments, comedy performances, concerts, dance and gaiety traditionally part of the celebration. At this time, many members of the community come to the synagogue dressed in costumes. In addition to the costumes related to the story of Purim, I could also see Scottish caps or Playboy Bunny earrings. Wearing of funny costumes, as well as the joy of unrestrained gaiety, is not only legitimized, but is directly motivated by the ritual- rabbinic tradition. An example of this is the commandment that on the day of Purim,”we have to drink until we can no longer distinguish between the damn Haman and the blessed Mordecai” – as written by Hayim Halévi Donin in his book, Being a Jew. (DONIN 1997: 85)
Celebration of Purim is a “ritual valve”, a release from the tension arising from the minority existence of “Jewish destiny”. At the same time, however, all this is done in the manner prescribed by tradition. This way, patterns of tradition do not get damaged. Thus, the effects of the Purim experience do not become a “disintegrating” factor in the everyday life, but it rather smuggles a cheerful, fun filled memory into the world of daily existance.
The above examples also illustrate the diversity of meaning and use of time. In our perceived world of “rush”, we live with different kinds of time. For example, in our com-petition with the minutes, reality of mythical times often goes unnoticed. Besides religions living in the “profane” times of modernity, just think of a sporting event, a theatrical experience, the “condensed time” of the cinema (as Mircea Eliade calls them in The Myths of the Modern World) or of a young couple’s housewarming party, which means the begin-ning of a “new life” for them. (ELIADE 2006: 21–43)
Measuring of and various cultural readings of quality of time is ingeniously described in Thomas Hylland’s Eriksen’s book, the Tyranny of the Moment. Eriksen calls the clock the external manifestation of time. It makes time in modernity “objective” and “measurable”, i.e. it became “something” that can be measured independently of human experience.
In contrast, in other cultures, actions control the course of time, “measuring” does not control the actions. This can be experienced even in societies where it is now customary practice setting the clock and the time. The author tells a story of his colleague who has done his field work in a village in Java. One day the anthropologist had to take a train to get to a nearby city. So he asked a man when the train leaves. First the man was puzzled, then pointing in one direction said: “The train comes from there, then stops here and after a while it continues on its way in that direction.” (ERIKSEN 2010: 219)