victim and its masks, The
an essay on sacrifice and masquerade in the …
Abdellah Hammoudi
199 pages | ~6 hrs
victim and its masks, The
an essay on sacrifice and masquerade in the Maghreb
By Abdellah Hammoudi
In the remote villages of southern Morocco, the Ait Mizane people perform a remarkable spiritual drama that reveals profound truths about human nature and divine submission. Anthropologist Abdellah Hammoudi takes readers deep into this ancient Islamic ritual, where sacred and profane dance together in ways that challenge our understanding of religious practice.
The ceremony begins with solemn reverence as the community reenacts Abraham's willingness to sacrifice, embodying complete surrender to divine will. Yet this sacred moment transforms into something unexpected: a wild, seemingly irreverent masquerade that appears to mock everything the sacrifice represented. Where others have seen contradiction and dismissed these as separate events, Hammoudi discovers a unified spiritual process that speaks to the complexity of the human soul.
Through careful observation of Berber religious customs, this work illuminates how apparent opposites can serve the same spiritual purpose. The title itself suggests deeper layers of meaning about the roles we play in our relationship with the sacred, and how submission and rebellion might both serve our spiritual evolution.
For readers seeking to understand how traditional communities navigate the tensions between devotion and human nature, this ethnographic study offers insights into the sophisticated ways spiritual traditions accommodate the full spectrum of human experience within their sacred frameworks.
What You'll Discover
- ✓ Explore Religious life and customs
- ✓ Explore Riten
- ✓ Explore Berbers
- ✓ Explore Berber
- ✓ Explore Social life and customs
- ✓ Explore Manners and customs
- ✓ Explore Sacrifice
- ✓ Explore Maskeraden
Topics
Details
- Published
- 1993
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- ISBN-10
- 0226315258
- Pages
- 199
- Language
- EN
- LC Classification
- DT328.M53 H3613 1993
