ABSTRACT
This chapter will include as religions all traditions that transmit transcendental revelations about the world. They place everyday events in a time of greater scopecyclical, ancestral, fateful, eternal, or providential-of both the living and the dead. Many of these traditions are written. Many others are purely ritual, handed down by experts and from elders to juniors, linked to but not dependent upon textual teachings and liturgies. But in cultures of writing, such as the Chinese, textual traditions dominate.
