Taboo

Etymology and concept

The word "tabu" is the original "taboo" (English transliteration), entered the European languages from Captain James Cook's expeditions to Polynesia in 1771-1779. In the Polynesian languages of Tonga, Hawaii, Samoa and others, tapu or kapu referred to that which is "sacredly prohibited" — under the protection of mana (sacred energy) of the gods or chiefs. The European anthropologists adopted the term for similar phenomena in cultures throughout the world.

The pioneer studies of James Frazer (in The Golden Bough, 1890), Émile Durkheim (in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, 1912) and Sigmund Freud (in Totem and Taboo, 1913) explored the universality and the function of the taboo in human cultures. They observed that taboos serve simultaneously to: 1) protect the sacred (preventing common people from contaminating it with profanity); 2) protect the profane (preventing it from being injured by the dangerous power of the sacred); 3) structure the social order (giving authority and identity to the group through what is forbidden together).

Common types of taboo

Religious-spiritual taboos: 1) Sacred names (the Tetragrammaton יהוה of God in the Jewish tradition that cannot be pronounced; sacred names of indigenous deities that only initiates can speak). 2) Sacred places (forbidden for common people to enter the inner sanctuaries of certain temples). 3) Sacred objects (the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament could only be touched by certain priests under penalty of death). 4) Sacred and profane periods (cycles of feminine menstruation in many cultures considered taboo; certain sacred days that require ritual abstention).

Social-cultural taboos: 1) Incest (universal prohibition with cultural variations of which degree of family relation is forbidden). 2) Foods (Jewish kosher, Islamic halal, Hindu vegetarianism, Christian fasts of Lent). 3) Words and gestures (each language has its forbidden words; certain gestures considered grave offenses in specific cultures). 4) Bodily contacts (rules of physical contact between strangers, between people of different status, between sexes). 5) Death and the dead (most cultures have specific taboos around dead bodies, mourning, talking about the deceased).

Working with personal taboos

Conscious reflection: 1) What are my own personal taboos? Beyond the cultural ones imposed, what topics, actions, words generate disproportionate visceral rejection in me? — these often hide unintegrated Jungian shadows. 2) What are the taboos of my culture/family/era? Conscious it allows you to choose which to keep (those that protect real values) and which to question (those that imprison without good reason). 3) The transgression of taboo is a delicate matter: there are healthy taboos to preserve (incest, harmful violence) and oppressive taboos to question (those imposed by power structures unjustly). The wise reflection on personal taboos is often deeply emancipatory work.