The Daily Omnivore

Religion and happiness have been studied by a number of researchers. The science of positive psychology has identified many components of happiness, and religion seems adapted to satisfy many of them. Some research suggests that both non-religious and religious meaning systems can be quite effective when it comes to managing death anxiety, and that the latter have a few additional advantages. There is extensive research suggesting that religious people are happier and less stressed.

There are a number of mechanisms through which religion may make a person happier, including social contact and support that result from religious pursuits, the mental activity that comes with optimism and volunteering, learned coping strategies that enhance one’s ability to deal with stress, and psychological factors such as ‘reason for being.’ It may also be that religious people engage in behaviors related to good health, such as less substance abuse) since the use of psychotropic substances is sometimes considered abuse. On the other hand, Rastafarians and others use cannabis as a religious sacrament.

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Dancing mania was a social phenomenon that occurred primarily in mainland Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. It involved groups of people, sometimes thousands at a time, who danced uncontrollably and bizarrely. They would also scream, shout, and sing, and claim to have visions or hallucinations. The mania affected men, women, and children, who danced until they collapsed from exhaustion.

One of the first major outbreaks was in Aachen, Germany, in 1374, and it quickly spread throughout Europe; another particularly notable outbreak occurred in Strasbourg in 1518. Affecting thousands of people across several centuries, dancing mania was not a one-off event, and was well documented in contemporary reports.

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Kurdaitcha [ka-dai-tcha] (or kurdaitcha man) is a ritual ‘executioner’ in Australian Aboriginal culture. The ‘execution’ in this case is a complex ritual similar to voodoo hexes or pagan curses. The kurdaitcha ritual is a nocebo, a negative response to physically harmless stimuli.

Voodoo death, also known as psychosomatic death, is a term coined by Harvard physiologist Walter Cannon in 1942 to describe the phenomenon of sudden death as brought about by a strong emotional shock, such as fear. The word ‘kurdaitcha’ is also used by Europeans to refer to the shoes worn by the Kurdaitcha, woven of feathers and human hair and treated with blood.

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Voodoo death, a term coined by Harvard physiologist Walter Cannon in 1942 also known as psychogenic or psychosomatic death, is the phenomenon of sudden death as brought about by a strong emotional shock, such as fear. The anomaly is recognized as psychosomatic in that death is caused by an emotional response—often fear—to some suggested outside force.

Voodoo death is particularly noted in native societies, and concentration or prisoner of war camps, but the condition is not specific to any culture or mentality.

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