Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-9q27g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T22:00:26.386Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Gods' Land of Asylum Andalusia and its Rituals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Extract

The Gods of our Ancient World are migrating toward the South. Pushed back by supermarkets, television shows and the rights of man divorced from himself, they have ended up taking refuge in the last Christian region that faces Islam: in Andalusia that is one of their last lands of asylum. They have left traces of their passage in our museums upon which we construct pyramids in order to feign our veneration for them. Now and then they accompany the silence of a symphony to the rhythm of the high priest's baton. However, in the South they are alive. Accommodating themselves to the din of household appliances and of tourism, they appear sometimes in all the splendor of the Midi during the passage of the virgins of peace and bleeding christs. But most frequently they hide in the midst of the Andulusian festival, under the flanks of the fighting bulls or in taverns that are filled with raucous songs. Be it that they intrude upon a play in order to transform it into a ritual; be it that they honor art and sensuality in their celebrations — they choose for their appearances the blurred boundary between the world of the sacred and of the profane.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Huber, H. and Mauss, M., “Essai sur la nature et la fonction du sacrifice” (1899), in:Google Scholar
Mauss, M., Oeuvres, Vol. I (Paris, 1968).Google Scholar
Leiris, M., Miroirs de la tauromachie (Paris, 1964).Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, C., L'Homme nu (Paris, 1971).Google Scholar
Pitt-Rivers, J., “Le sacrifice du taureau,” in: Temps de la réflexion, 4,1983.Google Scholar