8 - Arousal, emotion and motivation

Summary

Various ritual theorists (Whitehouse 1992, 2000, 2004; McCauley and Lawson 2002) have argued that the structure of certain costly rituals may be pivotal for their appeal and eventually for their successful transmission and survival. Specifically, physiological and emotional arousal may play a crucial role in modulating the performative experience of participation in collective rituals, thus having profound implications for the way those ritual actions are incorporated in people's autobiographical narrative schemas and for their capacity to motivate their subsequent transmission (Xygalatas 2008). In order to understand the role of arousal in the transmission of religious knowledge in the Anastenaria, it is also useful to examine the way such knowledge is passed on within the wider context of Greek Orthodox religion. Such an examination will reveal two thoroughly distinct forms of transmission: one dominated by conceptual control through extensive indoctrination, pervasive reiteration and official review and policing; and the other based on praxis, emotional and physiological arousal and personal exegesis.

Religious transmission in the Greek Orthodox context

Greek Orthodox rituals are certainly not characterized by high degrees of arousal. Most Christian rituals – at least in Europe – are not very arousing, but Greek Orthodox rituals seem to be particularly and invariably repetitious and unexciting. The role of the participant is minimal. For example, in a Greek Church service there is never any sort of singing or dancing from the congregation, and no movement except for rising and sitting down in specific intervals.