Prompt: Discuss how the anthropological perspective - including particular methods of investigation (specify) and application of theory (specify with your example/s) - is useful in understanding religions cross-culturally. Include details of at least one religion presented in class since Test 2 in your essay to punch your point. It is a plus if you use the words ethnocentrism and cultural relativity in your essay.

Druids in Nevada
	The practice of the “wicker man”, a phenomenon attributed to the Celtic Druids at the time of Roman insurrection into  Gaul and the British Isles, is something that isn’t well understood and hardly brought up even in the writings of the Romans who allegedly saw it. Julius Caesar, the most famous and lucrative reporter of the Druids in his The Gallic Wars, and who we depend on for much of the information regarding the Druids in modernity, only wrote about the wicker man in an offhand manner when describing the beliefs of the Celts. Despite that, an extremely similar concept cropped up in the western United States with the rise of rave culture and the Burning Man festival.
	One may be inclined to think, as with the previous Romans, that Burning Man is nothing but a display of erraticism by the hippies who perpetrate the festival and others like it. But it is not a purposeless endeavor, rather it draws upon the symbolic nature of the wicker man to bring about a spiritual cleansing and revitalization. Caesar claimed that the wicker man was a vehicle for human sacrifice, that the Celtic gods refused to answer prayers without an appropriate offering. Specifically, according to the Commenta Bernensia, Lucan attributes the wicker man ritual to Taranis, the Celtic god of thunder that’s often read with the same subtext as the Roman Jupiter. Taranis, as the sky/sun/seasonal/harvest god, is sacrificed to in order to provide a good crop in the coming seasons: a renewal of the harvest cycle.
	When one is able to look past the preface of human sacrifice, the wicker man’s true purpose becomes clear. It is a reinforcement of a community’s cohesion and psychological health through faith, as well as an explicit offering to a higher power. Attendees of Burning Man have described similar states of being, whether assisted by drugs or not. Ramez Naam, in his 2016 Burning Man Keynote speech, described himself as a once shy man incapable of making many friends. After observing and participating through a number of Burns, he now has the confidence to deliver such a keynote speech and participate in Burning Man leadership. Though the ancient Celts are gone, an understanding of at least one aspect of their religion can still be understood and experienced to this very day, without the lens of ethnocentric thought previously perceived through the Roman accounts.