Back to Interesting Facts

Ritual Bell and Ritual Drum each are formally linked to four religions in this atlas, and on both pages every one of those links is a bare holds with no note attached. Neither convergence can be read from its own links. Both can be read from its own description, which is where this essay is built from, the same precedent this atlas already uses for The Akashic Records.

Ritual Bell: A Sound That Separates Before From Now

Ritual Bell reaches four religions in this atlas: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Shinto. Its own description names three of the four directly. The sanctus bell in a Catholic Mass "rings at the consecration to direct attention to it, a practice that dates from the thirteenth century and from a period when the liturgy was in Latin and the priest faced away." Shinto worshippers "ring a suzu at a shrine to greet the kami." The Japanese bonsho, a Buddhist temple bell, "is struck one hundred and eight times at the new year, once for each affliction." The atlas states the common thread in its own words: "the bell separates what was happening before from what is happening now." It also carries a harder history: "a large bronze bell is a cannon that has not been melted down yet, and church and temple bells were requisitioned on a large scale in both world wars."

Ritual Drum: The Same Function, and a Harder History

Ritual Drum reaches four religions in this atlas: Buddhism, Native American Church, Sami Religion and Shinto. Its own description names the same range of function a bell serves, structuring ceremony, keeping a chant, marking a procession, sustaining a driving pulse, across forms as different as "the small two-headed damaru turned in Vajrayana ritual, the taiko of Shinto and Japanese festival... the water drum of the Native American Church." Its history is harder than the bell's: "drums are frequently the object that colonial and missionary authorities went after first, because they were what a ceremony could not proceed without." The Sami runebomme is the clearest case, confiscated and burned in large numbers during the seventeenth and eighteenth century Dano-Norwegian and Swedish missions, with about seventy surviving worldwide, mostly in museums outside Sapmi; the atlas names the 2023 return of the Freavnantjahke gievrie from the Meininger Museen in Germany to the Saemien Sijte museum as the case usually cited for the active question of their repatriation.

A Note on Two Religions This Atlas Treats as Living

Native American Church and Sami Religion are both carried on this atlas's restricted-tradition register, confirmed by a fresh reading. Neither carries a note of its own to quote, and this essay stays at exactly the level their own descriptions already use, naming the drum's general form and its documented colonial and repatriation history. It names no ceremony and instructs nothing, which is the same standard this atlas already applies to every living tradition it describes.

Where To Read More

• Ritual BellRitual InstrumentsFour religions, no edge notes; the description supplies the shared function, marking before from now
• Ritual DrumRitual InstrumentsFour religions, no edge notes; the description supplies the same function and a harder colonial history
• ChristianityAbrahamic (Monotheistic)The sanctus bell rings at the consecration, a thirteenth century practice from a Latin-liturgy period
• ShintoPolytheistic (Animist)The suzu greets the kami; the taiko structures Shinto and Japanese festival, one religion carrying both instruments
• BuddhismDharmic (Nontheistic)The bonsho is struck one hundred and eight times at the new year; the damaru is turned in Vajrayana ritual, one religion carrying both instruments
• HinduismDharmic (Polytheistic)One of the four religions carrying a live edge to Ritual Bell, not otherwise detailed in this atlas's description of the bell
• Native American ChurchPolytheistic (Animist)The water drum; on the restricted-tradition register, handled at description level only, no ceremony named
• Sámi ReligionPolytheistic (Animist)The runebomme, confiscated and burned by colonial missions, one case returned from Denmark in 2022; on the restricted-tradition register, handled at description level only