Leaps of Faith

In this week's Camino a Ítaca leaps of faith, both physically and metaphorically. Anthropology in action as people create their own faith. Click over to read the original version in Spanish in el HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

The bonfire was lit in a way that seemed entirely fitting with this part of the world, vodka. It had been a rainy turn of seasons and the wood piled up in the decaying square was still damp. After several attempts, a suspicious looking bottle with ‘Matador’ emblazoned on the cheap label, complete with a rather unsanitary aluminum foil lid, was produced. After glasses were poured all around, one was thrown onto the pile to propitiate Prometheus, Hephaestus, Vulcan or whoever was the current god of fire on the oily shores of the Caspian sea and suddenly the fire caught.

It was the spring festival of Nowruz and after the inequal thaw of decades of Communism, my Azeri students were mining the past in search of their religious roots. Competing mosques financed by Saudi Arabia and neighboring Iran vied for questioning souls but the deep underlying myths of the Caucasus could not be vanquished and they were infused into an amorphous syncretism with the standard dogmas.

This was anthropology in action, the very creation of belief before my eyes. It was a popular celebration of Islam, Spring, Vodka, fake Gucci track suits and uncomfortable looking pointy shoes all at once.

A shot of vodka and then a running leap over the cleansing flames and you had somehow garnered more points in the afterlife. This was a popular act of people taking agency of their beliefs and molding them to their convictions. It didn’t matter what the imams from Riyadh or Tehran were preaching, they were taking their own vision of faith to the streets on their own terms.

Here in Spain when the incense fills the air and the desolatory sounding drumbeats begin to ricochet up the narrow streets and the moldering icons and morbid statues get their springtime airing, something similar takes place. The people sidestep the ecclesiastical authorities and stake their claim to their heritage by taking it to the streets.

The church may have illegally registered more than 100,000 properties in its name over the years, but with their processions, the people indirectly tell the Vatican who these really belong to. On paper they may belong to a foreign entity, but here on the ground they belong to the community.

The vast majority of the people thronging the streets hadn’t attended church since their cousin’s wedding a few years ago, eat meat on Fridays and carry condoms in their wallets. The costaleros were jumping over their own metaphorical fires while the penitents were atoning back to something more primeval. The only real dogma were the stories represented.

These seem to me to be the Greatest Hits of the Bible, like the entry into Jerusalem and the last supper while avoiding some of the more uncomfortable scenes. It’s true there is often reference to the flagellation but there are no good old fashioned stonings of adulterers or fortunetellers and the likes. Not even the part where Matthew tells of the earthquake and all of the other dead coming out of their tombs and entering into the city. But it seems resurrection was somewhat of a banality at the time and so many other resurrections would take away from the uniqueness of Sunday’s big magic trick.