The world's "great" religions depend on traditions of serious scholarship, dedicated to preserving their key texts but also to understanding them and, therefore, to debating what understanding itself is and how best to do it. They also have important public missions of many kinds, and their ideas and organizations influence many other important institutions, including government, law, education, and kinship. Anthropology of Eastern Religions: Ideas, Organizations, and Constituencies is a comparative survey of the world's major religious traditions as professional enterprises and, often, as social movements. Documenting the principle ideas behind eastern religious traditions from an anthropological perspective, Murray J. Leaf demonstrates how these ideas have been used in building internal organizations that mobilize or fail to mobilize external support.

30 Selected lectures The Festivals and Their Meaning collects thirty of Rudolf Steiner's most important lectures on the festivals of the year. He identifies and illumines the true meaning behind Christmas, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, and Michaelmas, emphasizing their inner spiritual and outer cosmic aspects. Steiner shows that the festivals do not only commemorate great historical events and truths of the Christian tradition; they are in themselves--each year--spiritual events that manifest in seasonal and natural rhythms and carry a significance that grows and deepens with the development of human evolution. CONTENTS Christmas Introduction by Ann Druitt The Christmas Festival: Heralding the Victory of the Sun Signs and Symbols of the Christmas Festival The Birth of the Sun-spirit as the Spirit of the Earth: The Thirteen Holy Nights Christmas as a time of Grievous Destiny The Proclamations to the Magi and the Shepherds On the Three Magi The Revelation of the Cosmic Christ The Birth of Christ within Us Easter Easter: The Festival of Warning The Blood Relationship and the Christ Relationship The Death of a God and Its Fruits in Humanity Spirit Triumphant The Teachings of the Risen Christ Easter: The Mystery of the Future Spiritual Bells of Easter, parts 1 & 2 Ascension and Pentecost The Whitsun Mystery and Its Connection with the Ascension Whitsun: The Festival of the Free Individuality World Pentecost: The Message of Anthroposophy Whitsun: A Symbol of the Immortality of the Ego The Whitsuntide Festival: Its Place in the Study of Karma Whitsun Verse Michaelmas Michael Meditation The Michael Inspiration: Spiritual Milestones in the Course of the Year A Michael Lecture The Michael Impulse and the Mystery of Golgotha, parts 1 & 2 Michael and the Dragon The Creation of a Michael Festival out of the Spirit The Michael Path to Christ

Ce texte est un des ecrits fondamentaux de l'Hindouism

The first comprehensive collection of Vodou sacred literature in bilingual form

Living out of silence, out of a fully functioning, lovingly attentive mind, is requisite for depth or profundity in living or relating. A fully attentive, truly silent or meditative mind sees that there is real dualism of time and the timeless. An examination of a wide variety of writers shows that these understandings are seldom there in contemporary writings, just as they were not there in writings that have come down to us from the past.

Vedic Sanskrit literature contains a wealth of material concerning the mythology and religious practices of India between 1500 and 500 B.C.E. a crucial period in the formation of traditional Indian culture. Stephanie W. Jamison here addresses the conditions that have limited our understanding of Vedic myth and ritual, such as the profusion and obscurity of the texts and the tendency on the part of scholars to approach mythology and ritual independently. Tracing two key myths through a variety of texts, Jamison provides insight into the relationship between early Indic myth and ritual as well as offering a new methodology for their study.

After a brief survey of Vedic literature and religion, Jamison examines the recurrences of the myths "Indra fed the Yatis to the hyenas" and "Svarbhanu pierced the sun with darkness." Focusing on their verbal form and ritual setting, she essays a general interpretation of the myths and their ritual purpose. Her book sheds new light on some central figures in Vedic mythology and on the evolution of Vedic mythological narrative, and it points to parallels in other cultures as well. Indologists and other scholars and students of South Asian culture, Indo-Eurepeanists, folklorists, historians of religion, classicists, and comparatists will welcome this rich and suggestive introduction to the Vedic tradition."

With its complex nature and many forms and practices, Hinduism is one of the world's most elusive religions for outsiders to understand. In Essential Hinduism, expert Steven Rosen aims to make the facets of this faith clear. Essential Hinduism explores this rich tradition through its history, literature, arts, and people. This straightforward overview focuses primarily on monotheistic Vaishnavism, the most common form of Hinduism. Beginning with chapters about the foundations of Hinduism, Steven Rosen clearly lays out the religion's otherwise complicated history. Providing Hindu terms alongside English translations, he illuminates the basics of the faith for readers unacquainted with its varieties and tenets and examines commonly held misconceptions. Chapters about practices, including festivals, teachings, chanting, eating habits, and more, bring Hinduism to life in vivid detail.

The Baha'i Faith in America sets out to accomplish two main goals. The first is to introduce to the American reading public a religion whose name may be commonly mentioned or heard, yet in terms of its unique history, world-view, beliefs, and laws, is virtually unknown. Such categories provide the essential material for Part I. The second objective, which is the uniting thread of Part II, is to trace the historical development of the American Baha'i community from its earliest beginnings at the end of the nineteenth century up until the present day. The chapters in this section not only peruse the major events and introduce the leading personalities associated with American Baha'i history, they also trace significant themes, motifs, and issues that have characterized the community over the decades. Examples include early Baha'i connections with both American millenialism and metaphysical esotericism, to more recent associations with the Civil Rights Movement and the 1960s youth counterculture. In addition, the book's final chapters take a close look at some of the more controversial issues that have characterized American Baha'i community life over the past few decades. Here issues ranging in content from disagreements over differing styles of propogation to the freedom of expression allowed to Baha'i scholars are examined. In the process, the work reveals a dynamic and highly idealistic faith that is attempting to offer a model of religious community that is compatible with the continuing process of globalization.

Interviews with 30 converts from the 1930s and 1940s are a component of Barry Chevanne's book, a look into the origins and practices of Rastafarianism. From the direct accounts of these early members, he is able to reconstruct pivotal episodes in Rastafarian history to offer a look into a subgroup of Jamaican society whose beliefs took root in the social unrest of the 1930s. The little that most people know about Rastafarianism has come through the Jamaican music, Reggae, which resonates with the contemporary social and political struggle of the poverty-stricken cities of Trenchtown and Kingston. Bob Marley and the Wailers, for instance, with their politically charged lyrics about the ghetto, became emissaries for the Jamaican poor. Here Chevannes traces Rastafarianism back to 1930's prophet Marcus Garvey and his mass coalition against racial oppression and support of a free Africa. Before Garvey, few Jamaicans, the overwhelming majority of whom had been brought to the island from Africa and enslaved by Europeans, held positive attitudes about Africa. The rise of black nationalism, however, provided the movement with its impetus to organise a system of beliefs. Likewise, Chevannes explores the movement's roots in the Jamaican peasantry, which underwent distinct phases of development between 1834 and 1961 as freed slaves became peasants. The peasants established themselves in the recesses of the island and many eventually moved to cities, where the economic and social hardship already inherent in Jamaican society, was even more desolate. Between 1943 and 1960, detrimental social changes transformed Jamaica's rapidly expanding cities. Kingston's population grew by 86 percent, and crime and disease were rampant. It was under this severe social decay that Rastafari became a hospice for the uprooted and derelict masses. As a spiritual philosophy, Rastafarianism is linked to societies of runaway slaves or maroons and derives from both the African Myal religion and the Revivalist Zion churches. Like the revival movement, Rastafarianism embraces the 400-year-old doctrine of repatriation. Rastas believe that they and all Africans who have migrated are but exiles in ""Babylon"" and are destined to be delivered out of captivity by a return to Zion or Africa - the land of their ancestors and the seat of Jah Rastafari himself, Haile Selassie I, the former emperor of Ethiopia. ""Rastafari"" is a work with an historical and ethnographic approach that seeks to correct several misconceptions in existing literature - the true origin of dreadlocks, for instance. It should be of interest to religion scholars, historians, scholars of Black studies, and a general audience interested in the movement and how Rastafarians settled in other countries.

The massacre of 120 emigrant men, women, and children at Mountain Meadows on September 11, 1857, by Mormons and Mormon-incited Indians shocked the nation. It was not until the spring of 1859 that federal authorities began to conduct inquiries into the massacre. Bvt. Major James H. Carleton, 1st Dragoons, was instructed to investigate the even while en route to Salt Lake City. Carleton's account of May 1859 from the bone-strewn ground is full, accurate, and understandably emotional.

You can go to a mirror to find our how your body is doing, but how can you get a picture of your soul? A Well-Tended Soul holds a mirror up to your life for a refreshing, unabashedly feminine look at spiritual formation. Valerie Bell shows how to start building a life of incredible richness as you become more internally focused, forming your soul to God's own heart. A well-tended soul is a woman's beautifier. Soul-care weeds out what is malignant and false and builds in what is lovely, worthy, and redemptive. With refreshing candor, empathy, and earthiness, Bell uses her own experiences to help you - Live a deeper, more genuinely connected life - Pursue your truest dreams - Shape the world around you with an authentic spirituality - Discover the power of thankfulness to uproot envy and loss - Build confidence, joy, and beauty into your life - Transcend the fears and losses of aging . . . and much more.

Voudou (an older spelling of voodoo)-a pantheistic belief system developed in West Africa and transported to the Americas during the diaspora of the slave trade-is the generic term for a number of similar African religions which mutated in the Americas, including santeria, candomble, macumbe, obeah, Shango Baptist, etc. Since its violent introduction in the Caribbean islands, it has been the least understood and most feared religion of the New World-suppressed, outlawed or ridiculed from Haiti to Hattiesburg. Yet with the exception of Zora Neale Hurston's accounts more than a half-century ago and a smattering of lurid, often racist paperbacks, studies of this potent West African theology have focused almost exclusively on Haiti, Cuba and the Caribbean basin. American Voudou turns our gaze back to American shores, principally towards the South, the most important and enduring stronghold of the voudou faith in America and site of its historic yet rarely recounted war with Christianity. This chronicle of Davis' determined search for the true legacy of voudou in America reveals a spirit-world from New Orleans to Miami which will shatter long-held stereotypes about the religion and its role in our culture. The real-life dramas of the practitioners, true believers and skeptics of the voudou world also offer a radically different entree into a half-hidden, half-mythical South, and by extension into an alternate soul of America. Readers interested in the dynamic relationships between religion and society, and in the choices made by people caught in the flux of conflict, will be heartened by this unique story of survival and even renaissance of what may have been the most persecuted religion in American history. Traveling on a criss-cross route from New Orleans across the slave-belt states of Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, dipping down to Miami where the voudou of Cuba and the Caribbean is endemic, and up to New York where priests and practitioners increase each year, Rod Davis determined to find out what happened to voudou in the United States. A fascinating and insightful account of a little known and often misunderstood aspect of African-American culture, American Voudou details the author's own personal experiences within this system of belief and ritual, along with descriptions and experiences of other people, ranging from those who reject it entirely to ardent practitioners and leaders. Davis also places voudou in a broad context of American cultural history, from slavery to the Civil Rights Movement, and from Elvis to New Age. Current interest in voudou is related, in part, to the arrival of large numbers of people into the United States from the Caribbean, especially Cuba. Blacks in that country were able to maintain the African religion in a syncretic form, known as santeria. The tensions that have arisen between Cubans and African Americans over both the leadership and the belief system of the religion is discussed. Davis raises questions and offers insight into the nature of religion, American culture, and race relations. The book contains an extensive bibliography for further reading and a glossary of voudou terms for readers unfamiliar with the subject. ROD DAVIS is an award-winning journalist and magazine editor who has taught writing at the University of Texas at Austin and Southern Methodist University in Dallas. A fifth-generation Texan, he has lived most of his life in Texas and the South.

Aum Shinrikyo and Japanese Youth offers insights into Japanese spirituality by analyzing the motivations of those who joined the Aum Shinrikyo religious sect. This group attracted worldwide attention after its poison gas attack on the Tokyo subways in March, 1995. Daniel A. Metraux explores the reasons that thousands of Japanese people, many of them youths, joined the sect. He questions why they joined it, what they expected of their membership, and why they stayed involved or left. Metraux finds that most of the members got involved for religious and social reasons and did not partake in the terrorist and criminal activities of the leaders of Aum Shinrikyo. In addition, the author examines how the Aum situation reflects a growing sense of alienation from the traditional Japanese religion and culture among some of the young and middle-aged Japanese people, providing important information about the present status of the Japanese people.

Zen Among the Magnolias explores the integration of some of the practices of Zen and of Christianity. Benjamin Lee Wren discusses the possibilities as people from different backgrounds seek a deeper meaning for their lives, without destroying their heritage, through experiences such as zazen, tai chi, ikebana, folk dancing, and the celebration of the liturgy. He focuses on living in the present rather than in the past or the future. Wren explains a merging of asceticism and aesthetics which leads to a philosophy and theology that appreciates less as more, asymmetry, simplicity, tranquillity, and the beauty of aging. He shows how through parallels between the Four Noble Truths and Eight Fold Path of the Buddha and the Eight Beatitudes of Jesus, people become more sensitive to the problems of social justice. The result of an understanding of Zen through the nonverbal and nonimage form of pure contemplation called zazen, Wren demonstrates, is an experience of depth and breadth into the root of one's own being. This practice does not discount a Christian background; instead, it leads to a deeper understanding of all aspects of life.

John's Book of Revelation -- the Apocalypse -- has been subjected to countless interpretations by theologians over the years, mostly based on theory and speculation. In contrast, Rudolf Steiner spoke from his own direct experience and knowledge of the spiritual truths contained in St. Johns mysterious pictures.

Although he had previously presented his insights tin the Book of Revelation a number of times, in 1924 Steiner ventured to give a completely new perspective -- in response to requests by priests of the Christian Community -- by relating the subject closely to the work of the modern priest.

These priests felt the need to achieve a closer relationship with the Book of Revelation, he wrote later:

From his clairvoyant reading of the Akashic Record -- the cosmic memory of all events, actions, and thoughts -- Rudolf Steiner was able to speak of aspects of the life of Jesus Christ that are not contained in the four biblical Gospels. Such research can be spoken of as a "fifth gospel." After an intense inner struggle to verify the exact nature of these events, and checking the results of his research, Steiner describes many detailed episodes from the Akashic Record. This new edition has been retranslated and features six lectures that have never before been published in English.

Written by a noted philosopher and former president of India, this remarkable book describes the leading ideas of Indian philosophy and religion, and traces their influence upon Western thought from classical times, through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, to the present day. The author also argues that Christianity, which arose out of an Eastern background but flourished in the Graeco-Roman culture, will eventually find its re-birth in a renewed alliance with its Eastern origins.