Sacred contagion is the belief that spiritual properties within an object, place, or person may be passed to another object, place, or person, usually by direct contact or physical proximity. While the concept of sacred contagion has existed in numerous cultures since before recorded history, the term "sacred contagion" originated with French sociologist
Émile Durkheim, who introduced it in his book, ''The Elementary Forms of Religious Life''. For example, the
Book of Leviticus, in Chapters 11 through 15, specifies which animals are considered spiritually clean and unclean, and defines women during
menstruation
Menstruation (also known as a period, among other colloquial terms) is the regular discharge of blood and mucosal tissue from the inner lining of the uterus through the vagina. The menstrual cycle is characterized by the rise and fall of hor ...
and men after a
nocturnal emission as unclean.
The text also gives many examples of sacred contagion brought about by contact with these spiritually unclean people and things. For example, chapter 15 states that spiritual uncleanliness exists not only in the menstruating woman but also the bed she sleeps in, as well as any object placed upon that bed, and any person who touches an object placed upon that bed. We see not only the passing of uncleanliness through spiritual contagion, but also that the uncleanliness may be further passed, from person to object and back to person indefinitely.
Anthropologist
Mary Douglas
Dame Mary Douglas, (25 March 1921 – 16 May 2007) was a British anthropologist, known for her writings on human culture and symbolism, whose area of speciality was social anthropology. Douglas was considered a follower of Émile Durkhei ...
, whose work is heavily influenced by Durkheim, wrote an extensive modern work on the topic of sacred contagion entitled ''
Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo''. She states that, "We cannot understand sacred contagion unless we distinguish a class of cultures in which pollution ideas flourish from another class of cultures, including our own, in which they do not." Douglas and Durkheim both rejected the idea that concepts of purity and impurity, such as those found in Leviticus, were an attempt to use religion to explain hygiene, an otherwise impossible task in the scientific terms of the time, several millennium before the concept of
germs. Instead, according to Douglas and Durkheim, spiritual cleanliness and physical cleanliness are wholly separate and must be considered on their own terms.
See also
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Contagion heuristic The contagion heuristic is a psychological heuristic which follows the law of contagion and the law of similarity, leading people to avoid contact with people or objects viewed as "contaminated" by previous contact with someone or something viewed ...
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Law of contagion The law of contagion is a superstitious folk belief that suggests that once two people or objects have been in contact, a magical link persists between them unless or until a formal cleansing, consecration, exorcism, or other act of banishing brea ...
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Ritual purification
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Tzaraath
References
*Douglas, Mary - ''Leviticus as Literature'' (Oxford, 2001, )
*Douglas, Mary - ''Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo'' (Routledge, 2002, 0415289955)
*Douglas, Mary - ''Reading Leviticus: A Conversation with Mary Douglas'' (Sheffield Academic Press, 1996 )
*Pickering, W. S. F. - ''Emile Durkheim III: Critical Assessments of Leading Sociologists series'' (Routledge, 2000, {{ISBN, 0-415-20560-3)
Religious practices