Tabu

gist of tabu and its intimate inextricable relation with mana if we study a certain special form of Greek thunder-cult… the bridal chambers of Harmonia and Semele—and even to his day, Pausanias adds, no one was allowed to set foot in the chamber of Semele

Harrison argues that tabu and mana are inextricably bound together, demonstrated through the abaton—the lightning-struck, unapproachable place—as the paradigmatic Greek instance of sacred prohibition.

Harrison, Jane Ellen, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912thesis

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Those who break the tabu are damned and consecrated at once, destined for sacrifice. Predatory animals, it was said, would not follow their quarry past this line.

Burkert reveals the sacrificial logic of tabu-violation: transgression of the sacred boundary simultaneously consecrates and condemns the transgressor, collapsing the distinction between victim and violator.

Burkert, Walter, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, 1972thesis

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Thunder and tabu. Idea of religio. The Horkos, the abaton and tabu. The hypaethral sanctuaries.

Harrison maps tabu as a structural category linking thunder-cult, religio, and sacred enclosure, positioning it as a foundational topic within the phenomenology of Greek sacred space.

Harrison, Jane Ellen, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912supporting

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if you become a Bacchos you will partake of that feast but once in your life, and henceforth will observe the tabu on flesh food—the flesh of ‘your brother the ox.’

Harrison shows how initiatory participation in the Dionysiac raw-flesh feast generates a permanent dietary tabu, demonstrating how communal rite and taboo prohibition are dialectically produced.

Harrison, Jane Ellen, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912supporting

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In societies which are regulated by tabu, the individual who breaks a tabu is safe if he can invoke a stronger magical force.

Cairns, via Mead, distinguishes tabu-regulated societies from guilt cultures: tabu operates through automatic supernatural sanction rather than internalized moral principle, making it structurally external even when operating within the individual.

Douglas L. Cairns, Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature, 1993supporting

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Incest tabu, 62.15

Burkert’s index records the incest tabu as a discrete structural element within the sacrificial and mythological analysis, signaling its presence in the comparative anthropological framework of Homo Necans.

Burkert, Walter, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, 1972supporting

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“Introduzione al ‘Totem e Tabu’ di S. Freud.” In Sigmund Freud: Totem e tabu.

Kerényi’s editorial introduction to the Italian edition of Freud’s Totem und Tabu indicates his sustained scholarly engagement with the psychoanalytic theorization of tabu within mythological studies.

Kerényi, Carl, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, 1976aside

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M. Reinach does not of course ignore the mana element, but his emphasis on the negative, tabu, side, is, I think, misleading.

Harrison’s critique of Reinach establishes the critical methodological point that tabu cannot be adequately understood in isolation from mana, its positive counterpart.

Harrison, Jane Ellen, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912aside

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