Forms of ceremonial and ritualistic objects according to their functions
Summoning, mediating, and expelling devices
In the form of magic or sacred words, singing, and music, sound plays or has played an important role in worship in most religions. The same is true of light and of aromatic substances, such as oils, perfumes, and incense. The importance of these elements has brought about the creation or adoption of specific objects with functions that often serve converging purposes in worship. In most cases they are used to draw the attention of the deity, to establish a connection with it, and to exorcise forces that are evil or harmful to the god and to mortals. Because of the need to attract the deity’s attention, the sound-producing instruments are usually percussive or shrill, rather than melodic, and drums, gongs, cymbals, bells, conchs, and sistrums (timbrels, or rattles) are the most common forms.
Sound devices
Summoning devices are played either alone, as objects to accompany prayers or litanies, as in Vajrayana (Tantric, or Esoteric) Buddhism, or as instruments in a temple orchestra. Their size and form and the materials used to make them vary according to locale. Generally viewed as sacred, they are often worshipped, as in West Africa, Malaysia, and Myanmar (Burma), and partake of divine attributes, as in Brahmanism, Mahayana (“Greater Vehicle,” or northern) Buddhism, and Tantrism. Drums vary greatly in both size and form. The two-skinned damaru (drum) of Shaivism (devotion to the Hindu deity Shiva) and Tantrism, believed to be effective in communicating with the divine world, is shaped like an hourglass and fitted with two pellets that hang from cords and that strike the skins when the drum is twirled. Gongs usually are suspended metallic disks, with or without a central protuberance. The gongs of ancient and contemporary China, however, are of varied form, with cutout designs, and may be made of resonant stone or of jade. Cymbals are very widespread and were used in the Hellenistic mystery (salvatory) religions, such as those of Dionysus (a god of wine) and the Eleusinian mysteries (centred on devotion to Demeter, a seasonal-renewal goddess). They were the only instruments played in the Temple of Jerusalem, where they were known as metziltayim or tzeltzelim. The sistrum, used in pre-Hellenistic Egypt in the worship of the goddesses Isis and Hathor and in Rome and Phoenicia, as well as among the Hebrews, is composed of a handle and frame with transverse metal rods and mobile disks. Producing a sharp ringing sound, it was regarded as particularly sacred and was carried to the temple by women of high rank. There are countless types of bells; the Indian ghanta, or Tibetan dril-bu, a metal handbell with a handle shaken during prayers in order to attract beneficent spirits and to frighten away evil ones, is used particularly during Brahmanic and Mahayana Buddhist ceremonies.
In this category of objects, the shaman’s drum of the Buryat, Sakha, Altaic Turks, and Eskimo (Inuit) is composed of a skin stretched over a circular or oval frame provided with a handle; it is struck with a curved beater. It plays the same magical role as the ghanta, but it also serves as a mode of ascending to the realm of the sacred for the shaman. The bull-roarer—a flat, elongated piece of wood, ivory, reindeer antler, or other material—used in indigenous religions of Australia, equatorial Africa, western North America, Colombia, Brazil, and Sumatra, and the similar rhombos of the Hellenistic mystery religions, was propelled and whirled by a thin strap. Its humming sound and trajectory gave it the dual character of a summons to the divine world and a link with the celestial regions.
Lighting devices
In comparison with sound, which in worship usually presents a coercive character, lighting and fire, whether permanent or occasional, generally signify a sacred or spiritual presence, an offering, prayer, intercession, or purification. They are often viewed as sacred or even of divine origin, if not directly identified with the deity, as in the Zoroastrian fire altars. Their supports and containers can be made of either durable or perishable materials, depending on the ritual or ceremonial requirements. Torches have been used throughout history: in ancient Assyria and Babylonia they were used to carry a newly consecrated fire from torch to torch throughout the city three times a month; in ancient Rome they were sometimes placed in a hollow clay or metal shaft; and in the ancient Hebraic religion a lamp (ner) filled with sacred oil was used in the worship of the god Yahweh. In the Roman Catholic Church from about the 10th century on, wax candles have been used, with bronze or copper candleholders—the forms of which changed according to style. Two of them were placed on the altar for the mass, and two others were carried by acolytes (light bearers). The Easter (Paschal) candle, made of beeswax around a wood core, had a candleholder appropriate to its size. At Westminster, England, during the 14th century, a candela rotunda (“round candle”) was the centre of a “festival of lights” during the feast of the purification of the Virgin Mary (February 2), also called Candlemas Day.
Festivals of lights have been and still are common throughout the world, especially among the Jews, who celebrate Hanukkah, the Feast of Dedication of the Temple. In India and in Indian-influenced countries (particularly Thailand), the festival of lights (Divali or Diwali) is celebrated by the Vaishnava Hindus (devotees of the deity Vishnu) in October–November, at the end of the monsoon season. It is practiced on other religious occasions by the Jains (followers of the Indian reformer Mahavira, of the 6th century bce), Thais, and Tibetans, who celebrate it in December. The lamps, which are lit everywhere (e.g., in temples, in houses, and at crossroads), are also set afloat on streams, rivers, and lakes. Some lamps are made of glass—like the votive lights of Roman Catholicism—with a wick dipped in a vegetable oil, usually coconut; some are made of clay; and others are made of rice paste with a central hollow filled with ritual clarified butter, or ghee, or are cut out of a plant stalk in the shape of a bark or raft. The Jains use earthen saucers containing either wicks immersed in coconut oil or pieces of lighted camphor. Another form of this festival was known in Thailand, where three earthen pots, containing rice, seeds, beans, and an oil-soaked wick, were placed at the top of three poles opposite the temple entrance, and the fire was kept burning for three days.
The “cordons of light” placed around the sacred places of Buddhism during great festivals—such as at Bodh Gaya, in India, for the Buddhajayanti (the commemoration of the Buddha’s 2,500th birthday) in 1958—are composed of thousands of small brass lamps in the form of footed cups filled with ghee, in which a cotton wick is soaked.