totemistic

• “The last class of exogamous divisions are those called totemistic, when the clan is named after a plant or animal or other natural object.”

  The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV)

• “As our review of what may be called totemistic features shows, [878] the one permanent element in the relation between men and nonhuman, nondivine objects is reverence for these last on men's part; and the conception of an alliance, defensive and offensive, between the two groups has been proposed above as an additional differentia of totemism, a sense of kinship being involved.”

  Introduction to the History of Religions Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV

• “Critic Camille Paglia describes Plaster Caster's work as "totemistic," as an example of "women taking control," yet in the end it seems oddly mundane.”

  Chicago Reader

• “Sugar's point is not entirely unreasonable – imposing air passenger duty on private planes will amount to peanuts and is totemistic, rather than revenue-raising.”

  The Guardian: Osborne's swipe at bankers and jet owners is diverting, but not much use

• “It is undated, so it is difficult to know whether it was influenced by Brancusi's many totemistic sculptures, at least one of which Gaudier-Brzeska might have known.”

  The Guardian: Vorticism: the biz of the buzz – review

• “It is interesting that in animist, totemistic and polytheistic belief systems there are deities and powers associated with the branches of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.”

  The Two Trees

• “However, choosing someone who appeals to their totemistic cult, i.e. another post-menopausal white woman, might well assuage them.”

  Hillary's Top Fundraising Official Says There's "Risk" Of Obama Loss If She Isn't Invited To Be Veep

• “These ideas amount to projections of ourselves, which we do in many guises, from totemistic ideas of spirits, to literary projections onto characters, Einstein imagining himself on a reference frame moving with an electromagnetic wave, to projecting ourselves to gods, a God and so forth.”

  Vatican Holds Conference on Extraterrestrial Life | Universe Today

• “Now, it is not to be thought, save by “a priori” reasoners, that such a folk as the Northmen — a mighty folk, far advanced in the arts of life, imaginative, literary — should have had no further creed than the totemistic myths of their primitive state; a state they have wholly left ere they enter history.”

  The Story of the Volsungs

• “Update, 11/19: "The endless, unsettling repetition and referentiality, arduous visual trials, and near-totemistic attention to detail make the Quay Brothers and The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes distinct oddities in the landscape of contemporary cinema," writes Leo Goldsmith at Reverse Shot.”

  GreenCine Daily: Interview. Stephen and Timothy Quay.

Show 10 more examples...