ABSTRACT
All societies have structural beliefs embracing such issues as the origin of the world and what happens after death, and usually involving supernatural agencies seen in animistic or anthropomorphic form. In many societies, these beliefs are part of, and indistinguishable from, the socio-cultural structure as a whole: the distinction between sacred and secular is much less clear than it is in the West today. Nowadays we tend to distinguish between such beliefs and what we know about the world but, in societies in which the religious system is pervasive, such a distinction is far less clear-cut.
