Paganistan - a moniker adapted by the Twin Cities Contemporary Pagan community - is the title of a history and ethnography of a regionally unique, urban, and vibrant community in Minnesota. The story of the community traces the formation of some of the earliest organizations and churches in the US, the influence of publication houses and bookstores, the marketplace, and the local University, on the growth and sustenance of a distinct Pagan community identity, as well as discussions of the patterns of diversifying and cohesion that occur as a result of societal pressure, politics, and generational growth within it. As the first ever study of this long-lived community, this book sets out to document Paganistan as another aspect of the increasing prevalence of Paganism in the US and contributes to the discussion of the formation of new American religious communities. Revealing how canonical theories about community formation in anthropology do not always fit comfortably nor accurately describe how a vibrant Pagan community creates and sustains itself, this book will be of interest to scholars of religion and new religious movements worldwide, and offers a valuable contribution to discussions within both urban anthropology and sociology.

Su-un and His World of Symbols explores the image which Choe Che-u (Su-un), the founder of Donghak (Eastern Learning) Korea's first indigenous religion, had of himself as a religious leader and human being. Su-un gave his life so that he could share his symbols, his scriptures and the foundational principals of his religion with all people, regardless of their status, gender, age or education. His egalitarian creed challenged the major religious traditions in Korea, and Korean society as a whole, to reflect on the innate dignity of each individual, and to reform their social, ethical and religious practices to accord with the reality of the Divine presence in the 'sacred refuge' that lies within. Exploring the two symbols which Su-un created and used to disseminate his religion, and the two books of Scripture which he composed, this book breaks new ground by presenting the only major work in English which attempts to ascertain the image Su-un had of himself as the prototype of a new kind of religious leader in Korea, and by extension, East Asia.

This book explores the long history in China of Chinese Muslims, known as the Hui people, and regarded as a minority, though in fact they are distinguished by religion rather than ethnicity. It shows how over time Chinese Muslims adopted Chinese practices as these evolved in wider Chinese society, practices such as constructing and recording patrilinear lineages, spreading genealogies, and propagating education and Confucian teaching, in the case of the Hui through the use of Chinese texts in the teaching of Islam at mosques. The book also examines much else, including the system of certification of mosques, the development of Sufi orders, the cultural adaptation of Islam at the local level, and relations between Islam and Confucianism, between the state and local communities, and between the educated Muslim elite and the Confucian literati. Overall, the book shows how extensively Chinese Muslims have been deeply integrated within a multi-cultural Chinese society.

Sacred Heritage in Japan is the first volume to explicitly address the topics of Japanese religion and heritage preservation in connection with each other. The book examines what happens when places of worship and ritual practices are rebranded as national culture. It also considers the impact of being designated tangible or intangible cultural properties and, more recently, as UNESCO World or Intangible Heritage. Drawing on primary ethnographic and historical research, the contributions to this volume show the variety of ways in which different actors have contributed to, negotiated, and at times resisted the transformation of religious traditions into heritage. They analyse the conflicts that emerge about questions of signification and authority during these processes of transformation. The book provides important new perspectives on the local implications of UNESCO listings in the Japanese context and showcases the diversity of "sacred heritage" in present-day Japan. Combining perspectives from heritage studies, Japanese studies, religious studies, history, and social anthropology, the volume will be of interest to scholars and students who want to learn more about the diversity of local responses to heritage conservation in non-Western societies. It will also be of interest to scholars and students engaged in the study of Japanese religion, society, or cultural policies.

This volume provides translations of texts on the Mamluk Sultan Qalawun (1279-90) and his son al-Malik al-Ashraf (1290-93), which cover the end of the Crusader interlude in the Syrian Levant. Translated from the original Arabic, these chronicles detail the Mamluk perception of the Crusaders, the Mongol menace, how this menace was confronted, and a wealth of materials about the Mediterranean basin in the late thirteenth century. Treaties, battles, sieges and embassies are all revealed in these chronicles, most of which have not been translated previously. The translated texts provide a range of historical records concerning Qalawun and al-Ashraf, and include the court perspective of Ibn `Abd al-?ahir, the later biography by his nephew Shafi`, and the writings of the Mamluk historian Baybars al-Mansuri.

This is the first book fully dedicated to Indian philosophical doxography. It examines the function such dialectical texts were intended to serve in the intellectual and religious life of their public. It looks at Indian doxography both as a witness of inter- and intra-sectarian dialogues and as a religious phenomenon. It argues that doxographies represent dialectical exercises, indicative of a peculiar religious attitude to plurality, and locate these 'exercises' within a known form of 'yoga' dedicated to the cultivation of 'knowledge' or 'gnosis' (jnana). Concretely, the book presents a critical examination of three Sanskrit doxographies: the Madhyamakah?dayakarika of the Buddhist Bhaviveka, the ?a?darsanasamuccaya of the Jain Haribhadra, and the Sarvasiddhantasa?graha attributed to the Advaitin Sa?kara, focusing on each of their respective presentation of the Mima?sa view. It is the first time that the genre of doxography is considered beyond its literary format to ponder its performative dimension, as a spiritual exercise. Theoretically broad, the book reaches out to academics in religious studies, Indian philosophy, Indology, and classical studies.

It has become increasingly clear that an adequate understanding of the contemporary processes of social, cultural, and religious change is contingent on an appreciation of the growing impact of social media. Utilising results of an unprecedented global study, this volume explores the ways in which young adults in seven different countries engage with digital and social media in religiously significant ways. Presenting and analysing the findings of the global research project Young Adults and Religion in a Global Perspective (YARG), an international panel of contributors shed new light on the impact of social media and its associated technologies on young people's religiosities, worldviews, and values. Case studies from China, Finland, Ghana, Israel, Peru, Poland, and Turkey are used to demonstrate how these developments are progressing, not just in the West, but across the world. This book is unique in that it presents a truly macroscopic perspective on trends in religion amongst young adults. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars working in religious studies, digital media, communication studies, sociology, cultural studies, theology and youth studies.

Widely used for centuries in Sufi circles, the prayer known as "The Most Elevated Cycle" ("al-Dawr al-a'la") or "The Prayer of Protection" ("Hizb al-wiqaya"), written by the great Sufi master Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi, has never before been available in English. This book provides a lucid English translation and an edited Arabic text of this beautiful and powerful prayer. It includes a transliteration for those unable to read Arabic, who wish to recite the prayer in the original language. Showing the importance of Ibn 'Arabi's devotional teaching, the book explores the prayer's contemporary life, properties and historical transmission. It gives full details of generations of well-known scholars and Sufi masters who have transmitted the prayer, providing an intimate and fascinating insight into Islamic history.

This is the continuing story of Milarepa and his disciple Rechungpa, first encountered in volume 18 of the Complete Works. As portrayed in The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa, Rechungpa is a promising disciple, but he has a lot to learn, being sometimes proud, distracted, anxious, desirous of comfort and praise, over-attached to book learning, stubborn, sulky and liable to go to extremes. In other words, he is very human, and surely recognizable to anyone who has embarked on the spiritual path. He all too often takes his teacher's advice the wrong way, or simply ignores it, and it takes all of Milarepa's skill, compassion and patience to keep their relationship intact and help his unruly disciple to stay on the path to Enlightenment. In the story that begins this volume, matters come to a head when Milarepa burns the books that Rechungpa went all the way to India to acquire, but by the end of the volume, Rechungpa is able to set out on his own mission to teach the Dharma. Much happens in between. Sangharakshita's commentary, based on seminars given in the late 1970s and early 1980s, draws from the stories of Milarepa and his wayward disciple much valuable advice for any would-be spiritual practitioner.

Originally published in 1956, this book provides a clear, scholarly, introduction to the main tenets of Zoroastrian dualism presented largely in the words of the Zoroastrian texts themselves. The book demonstrates the essential reasonableness of Zoroastrian dualism, which is the dualism of a good and an evil spirit, and to show what the means in everyday life and how it is philosophically justified. There are chapters on cosmology, the relation of man to God, the nature of religion, ethics, sacraments and sacrifice, the soul's fate at death and eschatology.

When this was originally published in 1950 this was the fullest biography of one of China's greatest poets that had ever appeared in any language. It tells the story of the poet's life against the background of contemporary history and, in doing so, gives a brilliant picture of Chinese life in the eighth century A.D. - during a period of the Tang Dynasty, fertile in great poets, such as Wang Wei, Tu Fu and Meng Haojan.

Originally published in 1955, and containing some 500 passages, this Biblical anthology brings together, in their original wording, the highest expressions of the Biblical view of life. The anthology is non-historical and non-doctrinal. It starts with the confrontations of man with God as seen in the 'calls' of the prophets, and proceeds to the ways of life demanded of man and the duties accompanying the privilege of vocation. It ends with the visions of the ideal society which in times of trial the author believes have sustained the mind. When this was first published, the anthology used often forgotten texts, and in so doing stimulated much attention to these enduring religious documents.

Originally published in 1953, The Hebrew Prophets' conception of the meaning and purpose of human history has considerable significance for a religious view of the world situation in the middle of the 20th Century. This book discusses the nature of the Hebrew prophets and the grounds for their claim to inspiration. He then examines the fundamental and universal religious ideas underlying their pronouncements. Particular attention is paid to their views on the basis of human morals, the character of the good society, the duties of government and the relation between religion and politics. Other chapters deal with their ideas of true religion and of the relation of God to human life.

Originally published in 1956, this book brings together from the canonical writings of Buddhism, Islam and Christianity the most important of the passages in which the view of the Founder is reflected. It aims to let each of the sacred traditions tell its own story and only such comments have been added as seem necessary to bring out the full significance of the passage quoted. The final chapter summarizes some of the difficult questions which arise from a comparison of the extracts from the 3 traditions.

This book demonstrates the spatialized and multi-scalar nature of Islamophobia. It provides ground-breaking insights in recognising the importance of space in the formation of anti-Muslim racism. Through the exploration of complementary data, both from existing quantitative databases and directly from victims of Islamophobia, applied in two important European capitals - Paris and London - this book brings new materials to research on Islamophobia and argues that Islamophobia is also a spatialized process that occurs at various interrelated spatial scales: globe, nation, urban, neighbourhood and body (and mind). In so doing, this book establishes and advances the new concept of 'Spatialized Islamophobia' by exploring global, national, urban, infra-urban, embodied and emotional Islamophobias as well as their complex interrelationships. It also offer a critical discussion of the geographies of Islamophobia by pointing out the lack of geographical approaches to Islamophobia Studies. By using self-reflexivity, the author raises important questions that may have hampered the study of 'Spatialized Islamophobia', focusing in particular on the favoured methodologies which too often remain qualitative, as well as on the whiteness of the discipline of Geography which can disrupt the legitimacy of a certain knowledge. The book will be an important reference for those in the fields of Human Geography, Sociology, Politics, Racial Studies, Religious Studies and Muslim studies.

Exploring religious and spiritual changes which have been taking place among Indigenous populations in Australia and New Zealand, this book focuses on important changes in religious affiliation in census data over the last 15 years. Drawing on both local social and political debates, while contextualising the discussion in wider global debates about changing religious identities, especially the growth of Islam, the authors present a critical analysis of the persistent images and discourses on Aboriginal religions and spirituality. This book takes a comparative approach to other Indigenous and minority groups to explore contemporary changes in religious affiliation which have raised questions about resistance to modernity, challenges to the nation state and/or rejection of Christianity or Islam. Helena Onnudottir, Adam Posssamai and Bryan Turner offer a critical analysis to on-going public, political and sociological debates about religious conversion (especially to Islam) and changing religious affiliations (including an increase in the number of people who claim 'no religion') among Indigenous populations. This book also offers a major contribution to the growing debate about conversion to Islam among Australian Aborigines, Maoris and Pacific peoples.

This book provides a new sociological account of contemporary religious phenomena such as channelling, holistic healing, meditation and divination, which are usually classed as part of a New Age Movement. Drawing on his extensive ethnography carried out in the UK, alongside comparative studies in America and Europe, Matthew Wood criticises the view that such phenomena represent spirituality in which self-authority is paramount. Instead, he emphasises the role of social authority and the centrality of spirit possession, linking these to participants' class positions and experiences of secularisation. Informed by sociological and anthropological approaches to social power and practice, especially the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault, Wood's study explores what he calls the nonformative regions of the religious field, and charts similarities and differences with pagan, spiritualist and Theosophical traditions.

New Era - New Religions examines new forms of religion in Brazil. The largest and most vibrant country in Latin America, Brazil is home to some of the world's fastest growing religious movements and has enthusiastically greeted home-grown new religions and imported spiritual movements and new age organizations. In Brazil and beyond, these novel religious phenomena are reshaping contemporary understandings of religion and what it means to be religious. To better understand the changing face of twenty-first-century religion, New Era - New Religions situates the rise of new era religiosity within the broader context of late-modern society and its ongoing transformation.

In a supposedly 'global age,' which not everyone accepts, the late Dr Jennifer Crawford has brought together a range of disciplines in her creation of a unified, sensitive 'way of knowing' for the global era. Drawing upon her academic and lived experience in philosophy, environmental science, social work and feminism, together with a deep spiritual commitment, Jennifer Crawford has deftly woven together complex ideas in her reconceptualisation of global justice. Spiritually-Engaged Knowledge: The Attentive Heart is framed within the author's troubling encounters in India recounted in the Prologue and Epilogue. These transformative experiences inspired her multi-disciplinary exploration of justice, which took her beyond the boundaries of Western epistemology. Locating the global, the author defines what it is to be a member of a global community in which cross-cultural encounters bring forth the possibility of new genre of knowledge. Crawford situates her argument within contemporary philiosohpical contexts, drawing upon postmodern discourse, globalisation theory and the realisation of shared horizon for all human knowledge, which offers up a potential for 'knowing globally'. Crawford takes the reader through feminist theory, the ethic of care, the craft of 'othering', surrender to the 'other' and to our relationship with the earth which, she argues, can be reconfigured into an ethically-based way of knowing. Drawing on a range of belief systems, including Australian Aboriginal spirituality, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, metaphysics and Western philosophy, Crawford rebuilds an inclusive, compassionate, redefinition of care for the new millennium, which she calls spiritually-engaged knowledge.

Treating 'religion' as a fully social, cultural, historical and material field of practice, this book presents a series of debates and positions on the nature and purpose of the 'Study of Religions', or 'Religious Studies'. Offering an introductory guide to this influential, and politically relevant, academic field, the contributors illustrate the diversity and theoretical viability of qualitative empirical methodologies in the study of religions. The historical and cultural circumstances attending the emergence, defence, and future prospects of Religious Studies are documented, drawing on theoretical material and case studies prepared within the context of the British Association for the Study of Religions (BASR), and making frequent reference to wider European, North American, and other international debates and critiques.

Nature, Space and the Sacred offers the first investigative mapping of a new and highly significant agenda: the spatial interactions between religion, nature and culture. In this ground-breaking work, different concepts of religion, theology, space and place and their internal relations are discussed in an impressive range of approaches. Weaving together a diversity of perspectives, this book presents an innovative and truly transdisciplinary environmental science. Its broad range offers a rich exchange of insights, methods and theoretical engagements.

Zensational Stories is an unorthodox and rebellious book that offers a commentary on over 100 traditional Zen stories. It examines the very fabric that we base our lives on and looks at life as it is - without getting into philosophical dogmas, religions or faiths. The truth is within you. Zensational Stories will motivate and inspire you to realise this for yourself. Read the book - so you can then throw the book away and recognise what the words are pointing toward - meditation!

Jewel of Reflection on the Truth about Epistemology is here translated and explained in an invaluable contribution to the history of knowledge, making available in English the very best within the traditions of philosophical speculation and argument in India and Sanskrit over more than twenty centuries. The "Jewel" distills the best arguments and most important positions of the past and provides the dominant focus for later philosophic reflection. The achievement of a great 14th-century logician, Gangesa Upadhyaya ("Professor Gangesa"), the Tattva-cinta-mani is a masterpiece of world philosophy, impacting in classical India not only philosophy but also literary criticism, jurisprudence, and medical theory for centuries. Among scholars, it is commonly counted-with perhaps one or two Buddhist treatises and one or two in Vedanta-among the top four or five philosophic works in the whole long history of classical Indian civilization (from 500 bce to the modern period). This three-volume edition of the work marks the first time time it has been translated into English in its entirety. Becoming the focal point of the long-running Nyaya school and canonized in Sanskrit literature, it is famed, across many schools of philosophy, for cogency of argument and consistency of analysis. Focused on four "knowledge sources" recognized in Nyaya, the text covers the epistemology of perception, inference, analogy and testimony in four chapters. In this landmark translation, Stephen Phillips provides an English-speaking audience all four parts with readable translations and running commentary. He contextualizes, analyzes and translates the text into understandable prose targeting especially those working in analytic philosophy but also anyone unfamiliar with Nyaya who may want to see and make use of its findings now accessible as never before.