446. Longman, Charles H. "Cargo Cults as Cultural Historical Phenomena." In Significations: Signs, Symbols and Images in the Interpretation of Religion edited by Charles H. Longman. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986a: 114-27.
The notion of a hero's return is common outside Christianity, at least as a possibility, and acculturation intensified this idea in many places. It was seen to have cosmic but local significance; i.e., it was the tribe that was to be saved in a cosmic renewal and amounted to a cancellation of history. At the earliest contacts, when the Westerners were [often of necessity] friendly [since in many instances they were at the end of their economic tether and had to rely on native sources for provisions] their obvious technological power was interpreted spiritually and they seemed to promise an unimaginable scope of new-found power.
It is only as the oppressive force of the Westerners, their radical denial of access to their sources of power, became evident that cargo cults arose. Westerners were hypocritical; they not only didn't fulfill their mythic function but didn't live up to their own [fundamentally eschatological] beliefs. Creation of a new mythic system becomes urgently necessary in view of the failure of both the old native one and imported Christianity.
The "madness" of cargo cult ritual expresses continuity of mythic structure in the face of the disruption of its content. People seek through new myths and their accompanying rituals to symbolically liberate themselves from the oppression they passively endure and to actively create a new mode of existence in the new circumstances; possession is a necessity. Burridge's (1960: item 141) description of the Mambu cult is a case in point. Jarvie's (1964) Revolution in Anthropology results from a similar process in western social science, whereby an "anthropology of experience" becomes necessary.
447. ———. "Conquest and Culture Contact in the New World." In Significations: Signs, Symbols and Images in the Interpretation of Religion edited by Charles H. Longman. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986b: 97-113.
The notion of a sacred center as a locus of power, which symbolically organizes all of space and from which power radiates and to which it returns, is an invention of urban, settled civilizations. Culture contact [involving urban cultures] can be seen to be an enactment of this idea. The earliest planned explorations were deliberately conceived as pilgrimages, a return from which to the sacred center is always predicated. [Since a pilgrimage is by defintion a visit to a sacred locale away from home, the "sacred center," it follows that the location of the sacred is doubleČat the center and beyond the edges of the known. This accords with the double nature of the sacred which, as Durkheim observed, sustains the ordered routine of the everyday but also, as prophets know, provides the destructive/renewing impetus that recreates the old order when needed. This part of the sacred, the renewing aspect, is what is found in the wilderness and on pilgrimage to or through it.]
448. ———. "The Oppressive Elements in Religion and the Religions of the Oppressed." In Significations: Signs, Symbols and Images in the Interpretation of Religion edited by Charles H. Longman. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986c: 158-72.
Theorists of religion have difficulty with that aspect of religious experience which may be called demonic or at least threatening; religion's oppressive side was beyond their capacity, until Rudolf Otto categorized it as mystery, that which escapes categories and which is present in all traditions. It is experienced as an intrusion of the sacred as foreign. See also the previous entry.
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