So this last week I only went to ANTH 392 once because I have been horribly sick... but on the day that I was there (being Tuesday) we were continuing our discussions about the Funeral of a Rus' and on the three stages of a rite of passage; being the preliminal, liminal, and postliminal stages. As part of the preliminal stage some one mentioned that when the person originally became ill and was separated from the band that was the beginning of their rite of passage of death. I thought this was a very interesting way of looking at it, but it does make sense because sick people were placed away from the general community with food and water to get better or to die.
The above picture (compleetly unrelated to Rus') is a little piece of folklore/mythology that I found interesting while looking up illnesses on line. It features two sick men in bed with Caladrius birds perched on the sheets. Supposedly a Caladrius had the power to take all sickness away from an individual by looking at their face (like the lucky guy in the front bed) but, if the patient was not expected to make a full recovery it wouldn't look at him at all (like the poor guy in the back). The Caladrius, specifically, is from Roman mythology but the same idea of the white healing bird is in Greek mythology as well but known as Dhalion. It was also adopted as a representation of Christ in the Medieval ages because Christ is viewed as taking our "sickness" (sin) away with him when he died on the cross.
So there's a little bit of fun, useless, knowledge to think about and I hope to be back in class again soon!
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