World Religions: Primal Religion Terms

1. Axis Mundi: The "world center" (the connection between Heaven and Earth); Travel correspondence is made between higher and lower realms. Communication from lower realms may ascend to higher ones, and blessings from higher realms may descend to lower ones and be disseminated to all.
Ex:
 
2. Taboo:  A system of social ordering that dictates that specific objects and activities, owing to their sacred nature, are set aside for specific groups and are strictly forbidden to others; common to many primal peoples, including the Australian Aborigines; A Polynesian language (among some Polynesian peoples, a sacred prohibition put opon certain people, things or acts which makes them untouchable, unmentionable, etc.).
3. Totem: (an Algonquian language): An animal or natural object considered as being ancestrally realted to a given kin or descent group taken as it's symbol (a symbol, especially one held in high regard).
Ex: A Totem pole:

4. Trickster: A person who tricks; cheat (tricksy: full of tricks; playful; mischievous).
5. Vision Quest: A rite of passage in some Native American cultures; the ceremony is one of the most universal and ancient means to find spiritual guideance and purpose; can provide a deep understanding of one's life purpose.
6. Divination: The art or practice that seeks to forsee or fortell future events or discover hidden knowledge usually by the interpretation of omens or by the aid of supernatural powers; unusual insight: intuitive perception.
Ex: The art of reading tea leaves:

7. Pantheism: The belief that everything composes an all- encompassing, immanent God, or that the Universe (or nature) is identical with divinity.
8. Polytheism: The belief in multiple gods.
9. Monotheism: the belief in the existence of one god or in the oneness of God; the belief in one personal and transcendent God.
Ex: The God shared by the religions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism:
 
10. Revelation (in religious context): The revealing or disclosing of some form of truth through supposed communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities.
Ex: The Revelation of St. John:

11. Transcendence: abstract, meta- physical. In Katian philosophy, based on those elements of experience which derive not from sense data, but from the inherent organizing function of the mind, and which are the necessary conditions of human knowledge; trancending sense experience but not knowledge.
12. Empathy: The projection of one's own personality into the personality of another in order to understand the person better; ability to share in another's emotions, thoughts, or feelings.