The 'myth' of a woman festa : ritual, belief and devotion : the development of religious rationality in Mellieha

Abstract

Festa is still a powerful fixture of contemporary religious culture. Drawing on its nature as a ritual episode, festa with its overtones of play has been described with scenes of exaggerated piety and seemingly mindless processions, as well as with scenes of merriment focused on band marches and frivolous dancing. Yet here, within the same exposition, we present alternative representation of the festa as it evolves within an energetically cultural, religious and economic pattern. This representation of the festa has the same episodes, but provokes different meanings from an individual point of view, which depicts popular beliefs, devotion and ritual. The conveyance of 'rationality' is ascribed to ideas and thoughts as a feature of religiosity which is captured in the sphere of popular religion and modem environment. Religion is reframed and the messages of tourism and modernity that, unwittingly filtered into the mentality of the villagers, have constructed different schemes of thought which identified festa as a collective religious representation and a flexible worldview that explains religion. Religion reinforces cultural identity and tradition, thereby creating 'myths' which mediate between the complex beliefs of individuals and the collective ritual. Festa increasingly engages individual subjects, particularly those who acknowledge the festa as a mix of sacred and profane episodes. Thus the awareness of festa involves the deliberate adoption of the idea of both inside and outside celebrations. Festa-context raises inevitable paradoxes but in its functional ritual, leads the individual to think about the meaning of sacredness. However the dislocation of the cultural economy can disorient beliefs and accelerate the commoditisation of religion itself. While modernism seems to over emphasise religious powerlessness, this ethnographic encounter attempts to construct a paradigm where individual religious 'rationality' allows the individual to construct and shape his belief system to act either in the commoditisation of religious processes or to adopt an authentic faith. The collective representation of festa and privatised beliefs reciprocally reinforce each other, and therefore there appears to be no end to a kind of dynamic liminality. At the same time festa ritual seeks to restructure beliefs in a more modern way, while reproducing organizational networks of social solidarity, which despite its dual reality moves individuals and the community to internalise the centrality of religion.