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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Aspects of religions (non-Christian) > Worship > General
In this study of the Ndembu of Zambia, ritual is examined under two
aspects: as a regulator of social relations over time and as a
system of symbols. Social life is thereby given direction and
meaning. An extended case-study of a series of ritual performances
in the life of a single village community is analysed in order to
estimate the effects of participation in these symbolic events on
its component groups and personalities.
A disciplined study that reveals the many contributions of Jews
throughout the history of rock 'n' roll.
"
The Myth and Ritual Theory" provides the first sourcebook for
one of the most influential theories of myth, the theory which
connects myth to rituals. Both classic and contemporary readings
are brought together in this unique volume. The selections cover
the theory from the origin in biblical and classical studies to its
spread to the study of religions worldwide and to its extension to
literature and the social sciences. Critics as well as exponents of
the theory are well represented. In his lucid introduction, Robert
A. Segal, a leading authority on the theories of myth,
systematically charts the history of the theory from its beginnings
to the present.
The sacred and the revered, the divine and the musealised, relics
have long been integral to Islamic practice. Wahhabisation has cast
a modernist spectre over celebrated traditions such as the visiting
of shrines and pilgrimages to the birthplaces of beloved religious
figures, yet these rituals continue to thrive. In this issue of
Critical Muslim, we look at footprints ascribed to the Prophet
Muhammad, to Adam and to Jesus. We pay our respects to Sufi saints,
who may or may not be Islamicised versions of the Buddha, and we
ask whether tradition is nothing more than a relic of times gone
by. About Critical Muslim: A quarterly publication of ideas and
issues showcasing groundbreaking thinking on Islam and what it
means to be a Muslim in a rapidly changing, interconnected world.
Each edition centers on a discrete theme, and contributions include
reportage, academic analysis, cultural commentary, photography,
poetry, and book reviews.
A new English translation of the most influential legal text in
medieval India. A Treatise on Dharma, written in the fourth or
fifth century, is the finest example of the genre of
dharmasastra-texts on religious, civil, and criminal law and the
duties of rulers-that informed Indian life for a thousand years. It
illuminates major cultural innovations, such as the prominence of
documents in commercial and legal proceedings, the use of ordeals
in resolving disputes, and the growing importance of yoga in
spiritual practices. Composed by an anonymous author during the
reign of the imperial Guptas, the Treatise is ascribed to the
Upanishadic philosopher Yajnavalkya, whose instruction of a group
of sages serves as the frame narrative for the work. It became the
most influential legal text in medieval India, and a
twelfth-century interpretation came to be considered "the law of
the land" under British rule. This translation of A Treatise on
Dharma, based on a new critical edition and presented alongside the
Sanskrit original in the Devanagari script, opens the classical age
of ancient Indian law to modern readers.
Different forms of religious worship and ritual are present
throughout the development of human beings, from early stone-age
ritual, nature religion and ancestor worship, to faiths from which
Christianity and the Eucharist emerge. In this book, Bastiaan Baan
traces the origins and metamorphosis of human religion in
historical, theological and humanistic terms, examining its
significance for human life on earth and in the spiritual world.
This book offers a fresh perspective on religious culture in the
medieval Middle East. It investigates how Muslims thought about and
practised at sacred spaces and in sacred times through two detailed
case studies: the shrines in honour of the head of al-Husayn (the
martyred grandson of the Prophet); and the (arguably) holy month of
Rajab. Author Daniella Talmon-Heller explores the diverse
expressions of the veneration of the shrine and the month from the
formative period of Islam until the late Mamluk period. She pays
particular attention to changing political and sectarian
affiliations and to the development of new genres of religious
literature. And she juxtaposes the sanctification of space and time
in individual and communal Sunni, Ithna'ashari and Isma'ili piety.
The northern Chinese mountain range of Mount Wutai has been a
preeminent site of international pilgrimage for over a millennium.
Home to more than one hundred temples, the entire range is
considered a Buddhist paradise on earth, and has received visitors
ranging from emperors to monastic and lay devotees. Mount Wutai
explores how Qing Buddhist rulers and clerics from Inner Asia,
including Manchus, Tibetans, and Mongols, reimagined the mountain
as their own during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Wen-Shing Chou examines a wealth of original source materials in
multiple languages and media--many never before published or
translated-such as temple replicas, pilgrimage guides, hagiographic
representations, and panoramic maps. She shows how literary,
artistic, and architectural depictions of the mountain permanently
transformed the site's religious landscape and redefined Inner
Asia's relations with China. Chou addresses the pivotal but
previously unacknowledged history of artistic and intellectual
exchange between the varying religious, linguistic, and cultural
traditions of the region. The reimagining of Mount Wutai was a
fluid endeavor that proved central to the cosmopolitanism of the
Qing Empire, and the mountain range became a unique site of shared
diplomacy, trade, and religious devotion between different
constituents, as well as a spiritual bridge between China and
Tibet. A compelling exploration of the changing meaning and
significance of one of the world's great religious sites, Mount
Wutai offers an important new framework for understanding Buddhist
sacred geography.
Sufism is a growing and global phenomenon, far from the declining
relic it was once thought to be. This book brings together the work
of fourteen leading experts to explore systematically the key
themes of Sufism's new global presence, from Yemen to Senegal via
Chicago and Sweden. The contributors look at the global spread and
stance of such major actors as the Ba 'Alawiyya, the 'Afropolitan'
Tijaniyya, and the Gu len Movement. They map global Sufi culture,
from Rumi to rap, and ask how global Sufism accommodates different
and contradictory gender practices. They examine the contested and
shifting relationship between the Islamic and the universal: is
Sufism the timeless and universal essence of all religions, the key
to tolerance and co-existence between Muslims and non-Muslims? Or
is it the purely Islamic heart of traditional and authentic
practice and belief? Finally, the book turns to politics. States
and political actors in the West and in the Muslim world are using
the mantle and language of Sufism to promote their objectives,
while Sufis are building alliances with them against common
enemies. This raises the difficult question of whether Sufis are
defending Islam against extremism, supporting despotism against
democracy, or perhaps doing both.
Hinduism comprises perhaps the major cluster of religio-cultural
traditions of India, and it can play a valuable role in helping us
understand the nature of religion and human responses to life.
Hindu image-worship lies at the core of what counts for Hinduism -
up-front and subject to much curiosity and misunderstanding, yet it
is a defining feature of this phenomenon. This book focuses on
Hindu images and their worship with special reference to
Vaisnavism, a major strand of Hinduism. Concentrating largely, but
not exclusively, on Sanskritic source material, the author shows in
the course of the book that Hindu image-worship may be understood
via three levels of interpretation: the metaphysical/theological,
the narratival or mythic, and the performative or ritual. Analysing
the chief philosophical paradigm underlying Hindu image-worship and
its implications, the book exemplifies its widespread application
and tackles, among other topics such as the origins of
image-worship in Hinduism, the transition from Vedic to image
worship, a distinguishing feature of Hindu images: their multiple
heads and limbs. Finally, with a view to laying the grounds for a
more positive dialogic relationship between Hinduism and the
"Abrahamic" faiths, which tend to condemn Hindu image-worship as
"idolatry", the author examines the theological explanation and
justification for embodiment of the Deity in Hinduism and discusses
how Hinduism might justify itself against such a charge. Rich in
Indological detail, and with an impressive grasp of the
philosophical and theological issues underlying Hindu material
culture, and image-worship, this book will be of interest to
academics and others studying theology, Indian philosophy and
Hinduism.
Ritual manuals are among the most common and most personal forms of
Buddhist literature. Since at least the late fifth century,
individual practitioners-including monks, nuns, teachers,
disciples, and laypeople-have kept texts describing how to perform
the daily rites. These manuals represent an intimate counterpart to
the canonical sutras and the tantras, speaking to the lived
experience of Buddhist practice. Conjuring the Buddha offers a
history of early tantric Buddhist ritual through the lens of the
Tibetan manuscripts discovered near Dunhuang on the ancient Silk
Road. Jacob P. Dalton argues that the spread of ritual manuals
offered Buddhists an extracanonical literary form through which to
engage with their tradition in new and locally specific ways. He
suggests that ritual manuals were the literary precursors to the
tantras, crucial to the emergence of esoteric Buddhism. Examining a
series of ninth- and tenth-century tantric manuals from Dunhuang,
Dalton uncovers lost moments in the development of rituals such as
consecration, possession, sexual yoga, the Great Perfection, and
the subtle body practices of the winds and channels. He also traces
the use of poetic language in ritual manuals, showing how at
pivotal moments, metaphor, simile, rhythm, and rhyme were deployed
to evoke carefully sculpted affective experiences. Offering an
unprecedented glimpse into the personal practice of early tantric
Buddhists, Conjuring the Buddha provides new insight into the
origins and development of the tantric tradition.
This anthology explores the dynamics of shared religious sites
in Turkey, the Balkans, Palestine/Israel, Cyprus, and Algeria,
indicating where local and national stakeholders maneuver between
competition and cooperation, coexistence and conflict. Contributors
probe the notion of coexistence and the logic that underlies
centuries of "sharing," exploring when and why sharing gets
interrupted -- or not -- by conflict, and the policy
consequences.
These essays map the choreographies of shared sacred spaces
within the framework of state-society relations, juxtaposing a
site's political and religious features and exploring whether
sharing or contestation is primarily religious or politically
motivated. While religion and politics are intertwined phenomena,
the contributors to this volume understand the category of
"religion" and the "political" as devices meant to distinguish
between the theological and confessional aspects of religion and
the political goals of groups. Their comparative approach better
represents the transition in some cases of sites into places of
hatred and violence while in other instances they remain
noncontroversial. The essays clearly delineate the religious and
political factors that contribute to the context and causality of
conflict at these sites and draw on history and anthropology to
shed light on the often rapid switch from relative tolerance to
distress to peace and calm.
The study of pilgrimage often centres itself around miracles and
spontaneous populist activities. While some of these activities and
stories may play an important role in the emergence of potential
pilgrimage sites and in helping create wider interest in them, this
book demonstrates that the dynamics of the marketplace, including
marketing and promotional activities by priests and secular
interest groups, create the very consumerist markets through which
pilgrimages become established and successful - and through which
the 'sacred' as a category can be sustained. By drawing on examples
from several contexts, including Japan, India, China, Vietnam,
Europe, and the Muslim world, author Ian Reader evaluates how
pilgrimages may be invented, shaped, and promoted by various
interest groups. In so doing he draws attention to the competitive
nature of the pilgrimage market, revealing that there are
rivalries, borrowed ideas, and alliances with commercial and civil
agencies to promote pilgrimages. The importance of consumerism is
demonstrated, both in terms of consumer goods/souvenirs and
pilgrimage site selection, rather than the usual depictions of
consumerism as tawdry disjunctions on the 'sacred.' As such this
book reorients studies of pilgrimage by highlighting not just the
pilgrims who so often dominate the literature, but also the various
other interest groups and agencies without whom pilgrimage as a
phenomenon would not exist.
In this unique volume, the spiritual journey of the Omer, the
period between the end of Passover and the Shavuot, has been
re-imagined to make it both meaningful and accessible for the 21st
century. The counting of the Omer begins with the escape from
enslavement to the wandering path of freedom, leading to a mystical
encounter with God, Sinai and Torah. Omer: A Counting provides a
daily spiritual guide for a personal journey through the Omer
toward meaningful and purposeful living. Beautiful and evocative
readings for each day, matched with the daily Omer blessing, offer
a transformative path from Passover to Shavuot. Also included is an
informative historical introduction.
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