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Totemism   Listen
noun
Totemism  n.  
1.
The system of distinguishing families, clans, etc., in a tribe by the totem.
2.
Superstitious regard for a totem; the worship of any real or imaginary object; nature worship.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Totemism" Quotes from Famous Books



... the origins of the prohibition of incest, and arguing that it proceeds from the custom of exogamy (or marriage outside the clan), and that this rests on certain ideas about blood, which, again, are traceable to totemism,—a theory which we need not here discuss,—Durkheim is brought face to face with the group of conceptions that now concern us. He insists on the extreme ambiguity found in primitive culture concerning the notion of the divine, and the close connection between aversion and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... case, though I dislike being reminded of it. It is an awkward question, because the fair being does not care a bawbee what I am writing; nor would she be much enlightened if I replied 'Madam, I am engaged on a treatise intended to prove that Normal is prior to Conceptional Totemism'—though that answer would be as true in fact as obscure in significance. The best plan seems to be to answer that I have entirely abandoned mere literature, and am contemplating a book on 'The Causes of Early Blight in the Potato,' a melancholy circumstance ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... Individual families at times join together and appoint a chief, but the arrangement is never more than temporary. The Bushmen have no concrete idea of a God, but believe in evil spirits and supernatural interference with man's life. All Bushmen carry amulets, and there are indications of totemism in their refusal to eat certain foods. Thus one group will not eat goat's flesh, though the animal is the commonest in their district. Others reverence antelopes or even the caterpillar N'gwa. The Bushman cuts off the joints of the fingers as a ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the question of totemism, I may say that the community and village names (as already stated, there are no clan names) do not appear to be referable to any possible totemistic objects. There is no specific ancestor worship, in connection with which I could endeavour to trace out an ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... passed by. The realm of organic life—vegetable and animal—does not properly fall within the limits of this study. For where organised life reveals itself, men find it less difficult to realise their kinship with existences other than human. The curious, and still obscure, history of totemism supplies abundant evidence on this point; and not less so that modern sympathy with all living things, which is largely based on what may be termed the new totemism of the Darwinian theory. But while attention will thus be focussed ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer


Words linked to "Totemism" :   totemic


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