The New World came into being in the Europeans' encounter with the indigenous religions and cultures of Central and South America. Yet these religions remain little known or are filtered through inadequate categories such as "animism," "superstition," or "syncretism." In this volume, an international group of the finest authorities working on the subject provide rich descriptions and provocative interpretations of religious ideas rarely gathered in one place. Since an exhaustive treatment would be impossible (it is estimated that there could be as many as fifteen thousand different South American languages living or extinct), the aim is to illustrate something of the range of religious beliefs and practices through cases that are exemplary. The first part of the book describes the religious views of the Aztec, Maya, and Inca, dating from the time prior to contact with Europeans. The rest of the book treats contemporary cases from the major cultural and geographical areas of Central and South America. Whether the focus is on myth, architecture, ritual celebrations, or shamanic practice, each essay provides a distinctive profile of the culture in question.Contributors include David Carrasco, Edgardo J. Cordeu, Mercedes de la Garza, Alfredo Lopez Austin, Juan Ossia Acuna, Alejandra Siffredi, Lawrence E. Sullivan, Terence Turner, Peter van der Loo, Robin M. Wright, and Reiner Tom Zuidema.

Part of the series Key Concepts in Indigenous Studies, this book focuses on the concepts that recur in any discussion of nature, culture and society among the indigenous. The book, the third in a five-volume series, deals with the two key concepts of indigeneity and nation of indigenous people from all the continents of the world. With contributions from renowned scholars, activists and experts across the globe, it looks at issues and ideas of indigeneity, nationhood, nationality, State, identity, selfhood, constitutionalism, and citizenship in Africa, North America, New Zealand, Pacific Islands and Oceania, India, and Southeast Asia from philosophical, cultural, historical and literary points of view. Bringing together academic insights and experiences from the ground, this unique book with its wide coverage will serve as a comprehensive guide for students, teachers and scholars of indigenous studies. It will be essential reading for those in social and cultural anthropology, tribal studies, sociology and social exclusion studies, politics, religion and theology, cultural studies, literary and postcolonial studies, Third World and Global South studies, as well as activists working with indigenous communities.

In The Postsecular Sacred: Jung, Soul and Meaning in an Age of Change, David Tacey presents a unique psychological study of the postsecular, adding a Jungian perspective to a debate shaped by sociology, philosophy and religious studies. In this interdisciplinary exploration, Tacey looks at the unexpected return of the sacred in Western societies, and how the sacred is changing our understanding of humanity and culture. Beginning with Jung's belief that the psyche has never been secular, Tacey examines the new desire for spiritual experience and presents a logic of the unconscious to explain it. Tacey argues that what has fuelled the postsecular momentum is the awareness that something is missing, and the idea that this could be buried in the unconscious is dawning on sociologists and philosophers. While the instinct to connect to something greater is returning, Tacey shows that this need not imply that we are regressing to superstitions that science has rejected. The book explores indigenous spirituality in the context of the need to reanimate the world, not by going back to the past but by being inspired by it. There are chapters on ecopsychology and quantum physics, and, using Australia as a case study, the book also examines the resistance of secular societies to becoming postsecular. Approaching postsecularism through a Jungian perspective, Tacey argues that we should understand God in a manner that accords with the time, not go back to archaic, rejected images of divinity. The sacred is returning in an age of terrorism, and this is not without significance in terms of the 'explosive' impact of spirituality in our time. Innovative and relevant to the world we live in, this will be of great interest to academics and scholars of Jungian studies, anthropology, indigenous studies, philosophy, religious studies and sociology due to its transdisciplinary scope. It would also be a useful resource for analytical psychologists, Jungian analysts and psychotherapists.

This book reinterprets Wifredo Lam's work with particular attention to its political implications, focusing on how these implications emerge from the artist's critical engagement with 20th-century anthropology. Field work conducted in Cuba, including the witnessing of actual Afro-Cuban religious ritual ceremonies and information collected from informants, enhances the interpretive background against which we can construe the meanings of Lam's art. In the process, Claude Cernuschi argues that Lam hoped to fashion a new hybrid style to foster pride and dignity in the Afro-Cuban community, as well as counteract the acute racism of Cuban culture.

Much previous literature on sacred natural sites has been written from a non-indigenous perspective. In contrast, this book facilitates a greater self-expression of indigenous perspectives regarding treatment of the sacred and its protection and governance in the face of threats from various forms of natural resource exploitation and development. It provides indigenous custodians the opportunity to explain how they view and treat the sacred through a written account that is available to a global audience. It thus illuminates similarities and differences of both definitions, interpretations and governance approaches regarding sacred natural phenomena and their conservation. The volume presents an international range of case studies, from the recent controversy of pipeline construction at Standing Rock, a sacred site for the Sioux people spanning North and South Dakota, to others located in Australia, Canada, East Timor, Hawaii, India, Mexico, Myanmar, Nigeria and the Philippines. Each chapter includes an analytical introduction and conclusion written by the editors to identify common themes, unique insights and key messages. The book is therefore a valuable teaching resource for students of indigenous studies, anthropology, religion, heritage, human rights and law, nature conservation and environmental protection. It will also be of great interest to professionals and NGOs concerned with nature and heritage conservation.

Originally published in 1967, this book is a study of witchcraft and sorcery among the Shona, Ndebele and Kalanga peoples of Zimbabwe. It analyses in their social context verbatim evidence and confessions from a comprehensive series of judicial records. It provides the first systematic demonstration of the importance and the exstent to which such sources can be used to make a detailed analysis of the character and range of beliefs and motives. The main emphasis is on witchcraft and sorcery beliefs, the nature of accusations, confessions and divination, btoh traditional and as practised by members of the Pentecostal Church.

Originally published in 1959 this volume studies the ritual office of the Mugwe which was of great social significance among the Meru of the Central Province of Kenya and analyses the social changes and decline of the Mugwe which came about in the second half of the twentieth century. Until this book was published there was no published literature on the Mugwe - one of the most basic and firmly established elements of the old structure of Meru social life.

Religion, Culture and Spirituality in Africa and the African Diaspora explores the ways in which religious ideas and beliefs continue to play a crucial role in the lives of people of African descent. The chapters in this volume use historical and contemporary examples to show how people of African descent develop and engage with spiritual rituals, organizations and practices to make sense of their lives, challenge injustices and creatively express their spiritual imaginings. This book poses and answers the following critical questions: To what extent are ideas of spirituality emanating from Africa and the diaspora still influenced by an African aesthetic? What impact has globalisation had on spiritual and cultural identities of peoples on African descendant peoples? And what is the utility of the practices and social organizations that house African spiritual expression in tackling social, political cultural and economic inequities? The essays in this volume reveal how spirituality weaves and intersects with issues of gender, class, sexuality and race across Africa and the diaspora. It will appeal to researchers and postgraduate students interested in the study of African religions, race and religion, sociology of religion and anthropology.

Vodou is among the most misunderstood and maligned of the world's religions. Mama Lola shatters the stereotypes by offering an intimate portrait of Vodou in everyday life. Drawing on a 35 year long friendship with Mama Lola, a Vodou priestess, Karen McCarthy Brown tells tales spanning five generations of Vodou healers in Mama Lola's family, beginning with an African ancestor and ending with Claudine Michel's account of working with Mama Lola after the Haitian earthquake. Out of these stories, in which dream and vision flavor everyday experience and the Vodou spirits guide decision making, Vodou emerges as a religion focused on healing brought about by mending broken relationships between the living, the dead, and the Vodou spirits. Deeply exploring the role of women in religious practices and the related themes of family and of religion and social change, Brown provides a rich context in which to understand the authority that urban Haitian women exercise in the home and in the Vodou temple.

J.D. Lewis-Williams, one of the leading South African archaeologists and ethnographers, excavates meaning from the complex mythological stories of the San-Bushmen to create a larger theory of how myth is used in culture. He extracts their "nuggets," the far-reaching but often unspoken words and concepts of language and understanding that are opaque to outsiders, to establish a more nuanced theory of the role of these myths in the thought-world and social circumstances of the San. The book -draws from the unique 19th century Bleek/Lloyd archives, more recent ethnographic work, and San rock art;-includes well-known San stories such as The Broken String, Mantis Dreams, and Creation of the Eland;-extrapolates from our understanding of San mythology into a larger model of how people create meaning from myth.

This is the first major study of the Nuer based on primary research since Evans-Pritchard's classic Nuer Religion. It is also the first full-length historical study of indigenous African prophets operating outside the context of the world's main religions, and as such builds on Evans-Pritchard's pioneering work in promoting collaboration and dialogue between the disciplines of anthropology and history. Prophets first emerged as significant figures among the Nuer in the nineteenth century. They fashioned the religious idiom of prophecy from a range of spiritual ideas, and enunciated the social principles which broadened and sustained a moral community across political and ethnic boundaries. Douglas Johnson argues that, contrary to the standard anthropological interpretation, the major prophets' lasting contribution was their vision of peace, not their role in war. This vision is particularly relevant today, and the book concludes with a detailed discussion of events in the Sudan since independence in 1956, describing how modern Nuer, and many other southern Sudanese, still find the message of the nineteenth-century prophets relevant to their experiences in the current civil war.

Looking at contrast and similarity between the above three religions and their influence in South Africa, the central question in this book looks to the future. It asks whether it is possible to enter a new era in religious history without losing cultural tradition in the face of rapid social change. In juxtaposing these religions, the author finds points of contact between views that, at first glance, seem to be opposites.

More than a quarter of the world's religions are to be found in the regions of Australia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, together called Oceania. The Religions of Oceania is the first book to bring together up-to-date information on the great and changing variety of traditional religions in the Pacific zone. The book also deals with indigenous Christianity and its wide influence across the region, and includes new religious movements generated by the responses of indigenous peoples to colonists and missionaries, the best known of these being the Cargo Cults' of Melanesia.
The authors present a thorough and accessible examination of the fascinating diversity of religious practices in the area, analysing new religious developments, and provideing clear interpretative tools and a mine of information to help the student better understand the world's most complex ethnologic tapestry.

China has a large number of indigenous ethnic minorities, some of which have large populations. Many of these minorities have animist, local religions, which are closely bound up with their ethnic culture. The revival of religion generally in China in recent years has been paralleled by a revival of religion amongst the ethnic minorities. This has caused a renewal of long-standing tensions between majority Han and non-Han minorities, the latter often having endured for a long time policies designed to suppress their separate ethnic identities and make them conform to majority Han norms. This book, based on extensive original research among the Bai people, a people with a population of around five million, explores these important issues. It considers how majority-minority ethnic relations have evolved over time, discusses amongst many other issues how local religions emphasise ancestor cults which reinforce minorities sense of their separate ethnicity, and concludes by assessing how these important issues are likely to develop."

According to the people of the Mueda plateau in northern Mozambique, sorcerers remake the world by asserting the authority of their own imaginative visions of it. While conducting research among these Muedans, anthropologist Harry G. West made a revealing discovery--for many of them, West's efforts to elaborate an ethnographic vision of their world was itself a form of sorcery. In "Ethnographic Sorcery," West explores the fascinating issues provoked by this equation.
A key theme of West's research into sorcery is that one sorcerer's claims can be challenged or reversed by other sorcerers. After West's attempt to construct a metaphorical interpretation of Muedan assertions that the lions prowling their villages are fabricated by sorcerers is disputed by his Muedan research collaborators, West realized that ethnography and sorcery indeed have much in common. Rather than abandoning ethnography, West draws inspiration from this connection, arguing that anthropologists, along with the people they study, can scarcely avoid interpreting the world they inhabit, and that we are all, inescapably, ethnographic sorcerers.

Die vorliegende Arbeit moechte zeigen, wie Karl Barth in seiner Auseinandersetzung mit dem Religionsbegriff zu den Thesen 'Religion als Unglaube' und 'die christliche Religion als die einzig wirkliche und wahre Religion' in der Kirchlichen Dogmatik (KD) 17 - Gottes Offenbarung als Aufhebung der Religion -gelangt. Sie beschaftigt sich mit Barths AEusserungen zum Verhaltnis von Religion und Wahrheit im Zeitraum von 1909 bis 1938 und richtet sich auf die konstruktive Rolle von 'Religion' und damit auf die Frage, welche argumentative Rolle und Funktion Barth dem Religionsbegriff zuweist. Daruber hinaus koennte die konstruktive Rolle von 'Religion' in Barths Theologie der zeitgenoessischen Religionswissenschaft eine neue Perspektive eroeffnen.

Die Publikation bietet einen geschichtlichen UEberblick uber die Auseinandersetzung bedeutender Philosophen mit dem altesten Problem der Philosophie: dem Leib-Seele-Problem. Wenn auch philosophischen Ursprungs, reflektieren die ausgewahlten Philosophen die Bezuge zu theologischen, psychologischen, psychosomatischen, naturwissenschaftlichen und medizinischen Dimensionen dieses Problems. Im Vordergrund steht dabei die Herausarbeitung aller Aspekte des Leib-Seele-Problems. So beschaftigen sich die Herausgeber dieses Bandes mit den Fragen, ob Leib und Seele wirklich verschieden oder identisch sind, wie sie aufeinander einwirken und ob die Seele nach dem Tod weiter bestehen kann.

Die Vorstellungen von den Osmanen schwanken in ihren Nachbarlandern und uberhaupt im Abendland. Eingebettet in eine romanhafte Rahmenhandlung werden Geschichte, Soziologie und Psychologie der Osmanen des 18. Jahrhunderts vor ihrer zunehmenden Verwestlichung im 19. Jahrhundert dargestellt und zeigen ein Selbstverstandnis, das in abgewandelter Form vor allem auch heute noch nachschwingt. Insgesamt vermitteln sie einen verstandnisvolleren Blick in die Entwicklung des Islam.

DEEP IN THE JUNGLES OF CENTRAL AMERICA, BURIED BENEATH A TEMPLE IN THE RUINS OF A LOST CITY, A YOUNG WOMAN DISCOVERS A MAGNIFICENT AND PERFECT CRYSTAL SKULL. WAS THIS ONE OF THE 13 SACRED CRYSTAL SKULLS OF LEGEND, PROPHESIED ONE DAY TO RETURN?

As great a mystery as the Pyramids of Egypt, the Great Sphinx or Stonehenge, the crystal skulls have created a storm of archaeological controversy…

Were they left behind after the destruction of a previous world or are they ingenious modern fakes?

Do they really possess telepathic qualities, allowing us to see deep into the past and predict the future?

What were the extraordinary findings of the tests carried out on the skulls by leading scientists?

Why do Native Americans claim the crystal skulls are stores of great knowledge programmed with an important message for mankind?

In a real-life detective story of the ancient world – with overwhelming implications for the modern one – the authors set out on an incredible quest to find the truth. This is the extraordinary story of the crystal skulls.

Chris Morton and Ceri Louise Thomas run an independent television production company specializing in making films with a philosophical, spiritual or environmental emphasis. Their highly-acclaimed documentary 'The Mystery of the Crystal Skulls' has recently been shown on BBC1 in Britain and on the Arts and Entertainment Network in the USA and Canada. It has subsequently been sold to numerous stations around the world.

Am 15. September 1680 fand die feierliche Translation der Reliquien der Katakombenheiligen Sergius, Bacchus, Hyacinthus und Erasmus im Kloster St. Gallen statt. Als Director musicae bekam der Stiftsorganist Pater Valentin Muller (Molitor) die Aufgabe, die Musik fur die Feier zu verfassen. 1681 wurde ein Teil des dafur komponierten Repertoires unter dem Titel Missa una cum tribus Mottetis in Solemni Translatione SS. MM. Sergii, Bacchi, Hyacinthi et Erasmi ab octo vocibus concertantibus, et 7. Instrumentis, sed tantium quatuor necessariis in Monasterio S. Galli decantata herausgegeben. Der im Kloster St. Gallen produzierte Musikdruck enthalt ein vollstandiges Ordinarium missae (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus und Agnus Dei) sowie drei Motetten. Grandios ist die aufwendige Besetzung mit zwei vierstimmigen Choeren sowie einem reichen, dem Festcharakter angemessenen Instrumentarium. Die Musik stellt damit ein wertvolles Zeugnis des benediktinischen Musikrepertoires dar, wie es im Kloster St. Gallen in der zweiten Halfte des 17. Jahrhunderts gepflegt wurde. Der vorliegende Band enthalt die vollstandige kritische Ausgabe der 1681 erschienenen Werke von Pater Valentin Muller (Molitor) sowie eine historische Einleitung.

Shu'ayb al-'Arna'ut war ein zeitgenoessischer Hadith-Gelehrter, der einen grossen Teil des Hadith-Kanons und daruber hinaus klassifiziert hat. In diesem Band wird zum ersten Mal seine Methodologie vorgestellt. Anhand einer komparativen Analyse wird ein exemplarischer Korpus von Hadithen untersucht, um die Charakteristika der Methodologie von al-'Arna'ut feststellen zu koennen. Zudem werden seine Beurteilungen von Hadithen mit denen von al-Tahanawi und al-'Albani verglichen. Die Autorin zeigt in diesem Buch auf, wie zeitgenoessische Hadith-Gelehrte mit den Erkenntnissen fruherer Gelehrter umgehen, welche Herausforderungen und neuen Entwicklungen dabei entstanden sind.

Die Studie erschliesst einen neuen Zugang zur "Liebe". Der Autor untersucht Liebe nicht lediglich als sinnlichen Affekt, sondern als Grundausrichtung auf das Gute. Seine rein philosophische Argumentation geht den Gegebenheiten der Erfahrung auf den Grund. Das Buch beginnt mit der Darstellung von Liebe als "Prinzip des Seins". Das in Evolution befindliche Sein des Kosmos weist auf das Goettliche als "sich verstroemende Liebe" hin. Liebe erscheint als Aufbauprinzip einer Seinsordnung, die zum Beispiel Ehe und Familie begrundet. Es folgt eine Betrachtung der Liebe als Prinzip des sinnlichen und des geistigen Erkennens. Die Betrachtung kulminiert in einem abschliessenden Teil mit einer Reflexion der Liebe als "Prinzip des Handelns" gegenuber dem Sein, der eigenen Person, den Mitmenschen und der Natur.

Die Autoren des Buches stellen die Geschichte der Budweiser Dioezese dar und reflektieren hierbei aktuelle Forschungsansatze. Das Buch zeichnet ein komplexes Bild der Entstehung und territorialen wie verwaltungstechnischen Entwicklung der Dioezese in den Jahren 1785-1850. Die Autoren arbeiten mit neuen Perspektiven die wirtschaftlichen Bedingungen heraus und dokumentieren die Tatigkeit der einzelnen Bischoefe, des bischoeflichen Konsistoriums und Kapitels. Dieses Buch bietet eine grundliche und systematische Analyse verschiedener Facetten des Lebens der Geistlichen in Sudboehmen: besondere Aufmerksamkeit gilt ihrer sozialen und nationalen Herkunft, ihrer Ausbildung und Erziehung sowie ihrem Alltag und ihren Aktivitaten.